Automatic relationship detection for spreadsheet data items
AssigneeMicrosoft Technology Licensing, LLC
InventorsAllan Folting, Stephen Van de Walker Handy, Diego M. Oppenheimer, Anatoly V. Grabar
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A system for automatically detecting relationships in spreadsheet data is disclosed. The system may be configured to analyze data items in the spreadsheet to determine whether two or more data items are unrelated. If the two or more data items are unrelated, then the system may notify a user of a need to define the relationship, and automatically defines the relationship for the two or more data items, or suggests the relationship to the user.
Claims20
A system for creating a report in a spreadsheet, the system comprising:
- a central processing unit;
- and
- a memory encoding instructions that, when executed by the central processing unit, cause the central processing unit to create:
- a data source module programmed to identify tables associated with the spreadsheet;
- and
- a relationship module programmed to analyze the tables and identify related tables that have an undefined relationship, the relationship module defining a relationship for the related tables having the undefined relationship by using heuristics to automatically define the undefined relationship.
A method for identifying a relationship between tables in a spreadsheet, comprising:
- identifying, by a computing device, tables associated with the spreadsheet;
- receiving a first table to add to a data summary table for the spreadsheet, wherein the relationship between the first table and a second table is undefined;
- determining whether the first table and the second table in the data summary table are related;
- and
- when the first table is related to the second table in the data summary table, defining the relationship between the first table and the second table in the data summary table, wherein defining the relationship between the first table and the second table in the data summary table includes using heuristics to automatically identify the relationship.
A computing device for identifying a relationship between tables in a spreadsheet, comprising:
- a central processing unit;
- and
- a memory encoding instructions that, when executed by the central processing unit, cause the computing device to:
- identify tables associated with the spreadsheet;
- receive a first table to add to a data summary table for the spreadsheet;
- determining whether the relationship between the first table and a second table in the data summary table is undefined;
- and
- if the relationship between the first table and the second table is undefined:
- providing a notification to manually define the relationship;
- and
- if the relationship is not manually defined, using heuristics to automatically define the relationship between the first table and the second table in the data summary table, wherein the heuristics include one or more of column name matching, value matching, data type matching, fuzzy value matching and using mapping tables.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.