A user-friendly query modeling tool and method, for representing, creating, modifying and modeling a query language statement for use in retrieving data from a database. In accordance with the present invention, the tool includes a user interface for receiving or building and manipulating a query, a query model definition for use in populating instances of one or more query models, and a model content provider for receiving query elements from the user interface and providing them to the query model, and conversely, for retrieving query elements from the query model and providing them to the user interface. The user interface enables the user to easily group and ungroup query elements by providing a visual tool for selecting query elements to be grouped and ungrouped.