Database federations are employed more and more in situations involving virtual and integrated information on demand, e.g., real-time integration of two databases. Heterogeneity in hardware and software platforms, as well heterogeneity in underlying semantics of participating local databases, makes it a hard challenge to design a consistent and well-performing global database federation. The ORM modeling framework allows not only for precise modeling of a data federation, but also hosts tools for reverse engineering, enabling local databases to recapture their intended meanings on a linguistic basis. We will demonstrate how ORM models together with reverse engineering techniques can be used in combination with actual, industrial-strength implementation platforms to develop semantically consistent and high performance database federations.