Information related to a first set of one or more data objects of a plurality of data objects in a database is determined. A composition of one or more actions is applied to determine the information related to the first set of one or more data objects. At least one of the actions includes a navigation action that maps a set of data objects to another set of data objects related according to a relationship type determined from a specification of the navigation action. Applying the composition of one or more actions may include recursive application of the navigation action. The actions may include a second action that performs a function based values associated with the data objects returned by the navigation action, where each value represents an attribute of the associated data object.