A system and method may reduce the costs associated with adding or editing configuration elements for an API. A generic schema for the API codebase may keep the configuration definitions flexible and associations between various configuration definitions may also be saved within the codebase. New configuration instances may then be created using the definition of the configuration. Since the definition of the configuration is saved in a codebase, updating the definition or adding a new definition will not require going through the cycle of requirement analysis, coding, and testing. Once the definition is updated, the application code may appropriately mark the difference between the configuration instance and its definition and it will utilize the new definition to create instances of the new configuration.