1. A method comprising: receiving, at an enterprise services framework including an archiver, an identification of an instance of a business object to archive; searching, based on the received identification, by the enterprise services framework including the archiver, for information defining the business object in an enterprise service repository, wherein the enterprise services framework searches for non-archived instances of business objects in a storage of business object instances and the archiver searches for archived instances of business objects; and based on the non-archived and archived instances of business objects that are retrieved during the searching, generating a schema for a definition of a data type of the business object and generating an instance of the business object in accordance with the generated schema, the schema being generated in accordance with a platform-independent file format comprising information reflecting a hierarchy of the business object; the generating the schema and the instance of the business object further comprising: generating hierarchy levels of the business object in the schema, wherein each hierarchy level, with the exception of hierarchy levels including references to stand-alone business objects, having respective attributes of the hierarchy level of the business object, wherein the format of the generating the hierarchy levels being the same for other business objects having the data type of the business object; and generating instance data to reflect the generated instance of the business object, the instance data being generated in accordance with the schema, wherein at least one of the receiving, the searching, and the generating the schema are implemented on at least one processor.