A presentation application and database development and management controller, collectively, produce an individual or group-specific, customized interface to a shared database. The presentation application can be template or script driven, and interacts with each client to provide a customized display. In an embodiment, the presentation application communicates with a network server to distribute data to clients over a computer network, such as the global Internet. The database development and management controller interacts with the database and manages the customization and distribution of data to the presentation application. A collection of service objects are built to represent the information stored in the database. A plurality of presentation objects are also provided as abstract representations used to organize and customize the display of the information. As such, one or more service objects are mapped to each presentation object.