What is the best practice to handle preinstalled system objects in application development?

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It's hard for me to actually name the problem but I'll do my best to describe it: In a database-driven application for an enterprise there are objects (rows in the database) which are always there. The application cannot live without them at startup because they are a fix part of the business that the application is created for.

Examples:

• If the application is managing contacts the contact that the application is running for (so "our customer" him/herself) is already an available Contact in the application.
• If it's an application that creates invoices for a certain type of business there must be a few record of entitiy type Product already available.
• In a mobile phone there are already some preinstalled profiles

These objects are known to the programmer and user. The programmer must be able to access them (load the special known customer contact or load the Default Profile). Now my questions are:

1. Is there a common name for these kind of objects / this kind of setup or pattern? I can imagine this is similar to "test fixtures" but I'm taking only about production enviroment, not testing.
2. How do I address these objects? Where do I keep them? How do I load them?
3. As they always have to be present how do I tell the system that they are readonly and must not be deleted?

asked 9 secs ago

Wombat

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What is the best practice to handle preinstalled system objects in application development?