An apparatus and method is provided for structuring a database of an automatic control system for common access by a third party software application and an automatic control system application of the automatic control system the database being generated using a set of database modeling tools. The method includes the steps of defining a set of parameters for the database and implementing the database for the set of parameters under a standard query language using the modeling tools. The method further includes the steps of generating a set of database headers using the modeling tools; and compiling an object code for the automatic control system application and third party software application using the database headers.