Patent ID: 7015912

Claim:
A computer program product for use in conjunction with a computer system, the computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium and a computer program mechanism embedded therein, the computer program mechanism comprising: a zebra chart generator module, the chart generator module including instructions for reading a data source, and instructions for generating a zebra chart, wherein said zebra chart comprises a plurality of bars and at least two of the bars in said plurality of bars comprise a plurality of linearly ordered components, wherein a negative component in a bar in the zebra chart that contributes the most negatively to said bar is closest to an axis of the zebra chart, wherein each of said at least two bars have a different number of said plurality of linearly order components, and wherein said at least two bars represent at least two different dimensions, said at least two different dimensions including at least two of a product dimension, a customer dimension, a time dimension, a geographic dimension, a shipping dimension and a sales dimension; and a zebra chart display module, the zebra chart display module including instructions for displaying said zebra chart on an output device, wherein, for each of said at least two of the bars in said plurality of bars, each component in said bar in the zebra chart is depicted in a pattern that differs from components in the bar that border the component.