Methods and systems for facilitating distribution of application functionality across a multi-tier architecture are provided. According to one embodiment, responsive to initialization of an application running on a server computer system, an instance of a data source object that implements program logic is created by the application. One or more hierarchical data maps in a form of random access memory-resident data structures are populated and retained indefinitely according to the application by the data source object by instantiating multiple data points within the hierarchical data maps and setting a name and a value of each data point based on data gathered from an arbitrary source and an optional format established by the application. Requests to store or retrieve information to or from the hierarchical data maps issued by a client computer system communicating with the server computer system via a network are responded to by the application.