System and method of defining a hierarchical datamodel and related computation and instruction rules using spreadsheet like user interface

• US 8,055,995 B2
• Filed: 03/10/2006
• Issued: 11/08/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 03/11/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: OrangeScape Technologies Ltd.
• Original Assignee: OrangeScape Technologies Ltd.
• Inventors: Jaganathan, Prasanna Babu, Manickadas, Rajesh, Sambandam, Suresh, Varadharajan, Dinesh, Karthikeyan, Manivanna
• Primary Examiner(s): HUYNH, THU V
• Application Number:
  US11/885,896
• Publication Number:
  US 20080256432A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,069 Days
• Field of Search: 715/210, 715/212, 715/217, 715/219, 715/220, 715/213, 715/214
• US Class Current: 715/212
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 40/18 of spreadsheets form-filling G06F40/174
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/00 Administration; Management

Abstract

The present invention relates to the field of information processing involving digital computers, embedded devices and more particularly, to a method and system for defining hierarchical data model and related computation and instructions rules using electronic spreadsheet like interface. The system and method of the invention are directed to user friendly, fast, development of multi-user, workflow enabled applications using spreadsheet as a tool for application modeling.

Claims

1. A system for defining a hierarchical data model and related computation using a spreadsheet like interface comprising:

a) a memory in which are stored a plurality of machine instructions; and

(b) a processor, coupled to the memory, for implementing a plurality of functions when executing the machine instructions stored in the memory, said plurality of functions selectively including;

nesting of various sheets in a spreadsheet by supporting a relationship between sheets in an internal data structure adapted to hold information about every sheet and its relationship with other sheets;

providing and supporting multiple relationship types among the sheets, said relationship types selected from a shared relationship wherein a sheet is accessible/viewable from another sheet or sheets with which it has a shared relation, and an exclusive relationship wherein the sheets are exclusively accessed by a parent sheet alone;

supporting ‘

Meta-Data’

in a non-intrusive manner;

identifying and classifying cells in the sheets of the spreadsheet selected from;

(i) public cells, which are interactive to an end user with the system and

(ii) private cells, which are internal to the sheet and need not be exposed to the end user;

providing dynamic templates to recognize templates of similar type and automatically synchronizes computation logic and constants across the sheets without any manual intervention;

creating a virtual template inside said data structure by incrementally capturing unique user changes in a sheet;

automatically mapping without user intervention the underlying structure of the virtual template to a database table;

maintaining the relationships between the sheets in a ‘

Meta Data’

structure and using the ‘

Meta Data’

structure to create database table relationships;

defining a ‘

3D formula’

comprising analyzing interdependencies and relationships between sheets that will automatically compute based on a hierarchical context;

maintaining a ‘

Change History’

which maintains changes done to a hierarchical data model against its previous version;

automatic migration (Change History) to migrate data from an earlier version of the hierarchical data model to a new version of the hierarchical data model;

allowing functionally different models to reuse functionality via an ‘

import’

capability wherein sheets from one hierarchical data model can be imported into and can be linked to at least one of the sheets in another hierarchical data which allows for the formulas of the imported sheets to be reused in a linked mode;

supporting complex data-types which are created using two or more simple data types in a spreadsheet model; and

computation and functions applied to complex data types which are also used to store large amounts of lookup information which vary at runtime.

2. A system according to claim 1 adapted to identify and classify said public cells comprising:

(a) input cells wherein data is entered by the user, which become a starting point for computations and hold data that are typically unique for every sheet of a common template, said input cells also holding default values with which new sheets are initialized, that can be changed by the user; and

(b) output cells, which are formula cells that hold the results based on the computations that are linked to the input cells.

3. A system according to claim 2 comprising identifying and classifying said private cells comprising:

(a) constant cells adapted to hold a fixed value for all sheet instances that belong to the common template; and

(b) intermediate cells, which are formulae cells that participate in intermediate computations but are not visible to the end user.

4. A system for defining a hierarchical data model and related computation using spreadsheet like interface as claimed in claim 1 adapted for single or multiple user access to said hierarchical data model and related computation.

5. A server application comprising computer executable instructions stored in a computer readable medium associated with a server and executed on one or more processors in the server comprising:

constructing a hierarchical data model and related computation involving spreadsheet like interface comprising;

nesting of various sheets in a spreadsheet by supporting a relationship between sheets in an internal data structure format;

providing and supporting multiple relationship types among the sheets selected from a shared relationship wherein a sheet is accessible/viewable from another sheet or sheets with which it has shared relation and an exclusive relationship wherein the sheets are exclusively accessed by a parent sheet alone;

identifying and classifying cells in the sheets of the spreadsheet selected from;

(i) public cells, which are interactive to an end user with the application and

(ii) private cells, which are internal to the sheet and need not be exposed to the end user;

providing said public cells comprising;

(a) input cells wherein data is entered by the end user, which become a starting point for computations and hold data that are typically unique for every sheet of a common template, said input cells also holding default values with which new sheets are initialized, that can be changed by the end user; and

(b) output cells, which are formula cells that hold results based on the computations that are linked to the input cells; and

providing said private cells comprising;

(a) constant cells adapted to hold a fixed value for all sheet instances that belong to the common template; and

(b) intermediate cells, which are formulae cells that participate in intermediate computations but are not visible to the end user;

said server application adapted for access to said hierarchical data model and related computation by plurality of users.