Fluent API Patterns promote balance in managing object persistence. Code which obtains an object-relational mapper session contains API Patterns that manipulate persistence ignorant objects using calls to a fluent interface. When the developer's code executes, it may manipulate an object state, a property state, and/or a persistent relationship of the persistence ignorant object. The code may implement API Patterns such as find-change-save, current-value-original-value, nested-property, incremental-graph-load, incremental-graph-filtered-load, property-modification, dictionary, and/or other API Patterns. Additional examples of API Patterns include an API Pattern to read current, original, and database values for all properties of an entity; an API Pattern to set current and/or original values from another object; and an API Pattern to create a cloned object containing current, original, and/or database values. In any or all of these situations, the API Pattern calls to the fluent interface may be written in a strongly typed language.