Patent ID: 7165214

Claim:
A data management system having interface components that enable connections with a display device, an input device, and a data storage device, the data management system comprising: screen display section configured for displaying a designation screen on the display device, the designation screen allowing a user to designate a spreadsheet having a row/column tabular data structure and a specific column contained in that spreadsheet; designation acceptance section configured for accepting the spreadsheet and the specific column designated by the user through the input device in accordance with the designation screen displayed; merged recording section configured for generating a merging sheet having a row/column tabular data structure and storing the merging sheet generated into the data storage device; data comparison section configured for comparing cells of the spreadsheet accepted by the designation acceptance section and cells of the merging sheet stored in the data storage device on a cell-by-cell basis, the cells of the spreadsheet and the cells of the merging sheet being intersection areas of the rows and columns; and sheet merging section configured for merging rows of cells of the spreadsheet to the corresponding rows of cells of the merging sheet, respectively as determined by the specific column based on the result of the comparison by the data comparison section; adding, as new rows to the merging sheet, rows of cells which exist only in the spreadsheet as determined by the specific column; and respectively recording flags to the merged or added rows of the merging sheet, in which the flags uniquely identify the respective spreadsheet sources of the merged or added rows; wherein the relationship between multiple spreadsheets, the rows of which are merged or added to the merging sheet by the sheet merging section, is determinable based on a combination of the flags, and wherein the merging sheet including the flags and the merged data are represented on the display device.