This illustration shows the TopLink components in the development cycle.The TopLink application development process is iterative. It includes three elements: the development environment, the TopLink run-time, and the metadata that ties them together. The TopLink development cycle includes the following components: the development component composed of TopLink Foundation Library (which includes the TopLink Application Programming Interface (API)), Oracle TopLink Workbench. The development cycle links to TopLink metadata, which is the bridge between the development of an application and the following component, its deployed run-time environment. TopLink Foundation Library provides the TopLink run-time component. Feeding into both the development and runtime components is the data source and persistent entities component.