Patent ID: 7627554

Claim:
A computer system comprising: a processor; a computer storage medium accessible by the processor, the computer storage medium including components stored thereon, the components comprising: a uniform interface that is independent of any user interface, having a set of defined options that are independent of any user interface options, configured to receive a generalized request from a report object and, based upon information included in the generalized request, access data from a general ledger database and return the accessed data to the report object, the report object being configured to operate without directly accessing the general ledger database; wherein at least one staging table, having a standardized structure which is independent of business rules of the general ledger database, is utilized by the uniform interface to store at least a portion of the accessed data; wherein the uniform interface is further configured to access the data from the general ledger database by translating the generalized request into a specific query which, upon execution, populates the at least one staging table with the accessed data; wherein the uniform interface is further configured to, in response to the generalized request, query the at least one staging table to retrieve the accessed data and to return the accessed data to the report object after execution of the specific query that populates the at least one staging table; wherein columns in the at least one staging table are related to the set of defined options of the uniform interface; wherein the at least one staging table comprises an account staging table that is configured for storing data related to accounts for an entity, a balance staging table that is configured for storing data related to requested balance information and a column-filter staging table configured for storing data related to filtered accounts; wherein the accessed data obtained from the general ledger database, stored in the at least one staging table, and returned to the report object comprises data from the account staging table, the balance staging table and the column-filter staging table; and wherein the uniform interface comprises computer program code stored on the computer storage medium and executable by the processor of the computer system.