In one aspect of the present invention a framework is presented for the generation and execution of code performing conversion to and from an arbitrary native or "wire" data format. The code facilitates a business application using a service provided by a service implementation in accordance with a native language of the implementation which may be different from the language of the business application. The main components of the framework include a model of the information necessary for the formatting of data which may be represented through the extensions to WSDL; a tool time support environment providing structured support for the generation of format handlers; and runtime support for the generated format handlers. In an alternative to this static invocation model, a dynamic usage scenario provides for invocation of format handlers dynamically obtained from a format handler factory. In both cases, the runtime uses a lazy approach to the conversion to and from the native format for improved performance. The framework is particularly suited to resource adapters for adapting an EIS service implementation for use with a business application desiring a service from the EIS.