Easy-to-use data report specification
AssigneeMicrosoft Corporation
InventorsBrian E. Kihneman, Clinton D. Covington, Pavel R. Karimov, Robert Cooper, Zachary P. Woodall
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method and system for the graphical specification and modification of reports is disclosed which enables data reports to be easily created via a report design dialogue. The report design dialogue includes a group-level outline panel containing controls for grouping, as well as other report controls such as those for sorting and aggregating. A method and system for creating a group-level outline panel using an existing database report is also disclosed. Finally, a computer-readable medium storing a computer-interpretable data structure that stores one or more report specifications is disclosed.
Claims11
A computer readable medium accessible to a computing system and encoding a computer program for report specification comprising:
- displaying an ungrouped data;
- displaying a control for performing a grouping on said ungrouped data;
- receiving an input on said control;
- displaying a group-level outline panel having a prompt for allowing field selection;
- receiving an input on said prompt;
- displaying a pull down menu having a list of fields of said data;
- receiving an input on a field in said list of fields to perform said grouping;
- performing said grouping of said ungrouped data based upon said field forming a grouped data;
- and
- displaying said grouped data.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.