Patent ID: 7548925

Claim:
A method for providing a diagrammatical display of data stored in a multidimensional data set, the method comprising: receiving a reference to the multidimensional data set; generating a multi-level data diagram, wherein the data diagram provides a graphical representation of nodes, and wherein the nodes correspond to data from the multidimensional data set, the data diagram being represented by a data structure that has a shape object for each node of the data diagram indicating shape of the node, a breakdown shape object for each level of the data diagram, and an information shape object for the data diagram, a shape object indicating whether the node is a root node. whether the node has child nodes, whether the node represents an aggregate of nodes at the same level, and whether the node is part of a merged node; displaying the data diagram based on information of the data structure; generating a first pivot table corresponding to the displayed data diagram based on organization of the data diagram indicated the shape objects and the breakdown shape objects; displaying the generated first pivot table; receiving requests to modify the data diagram, the requests including a request to add a column to the data diagram, a request to hide detail of the data diagram, and a request to modify the graphical representation of a node; modifying the data diagram based on the received requests by modifying information of the shape objects of the data structure including modifying a shape object to indicate the modified graphical representation and to indicate that the node is merged and modifying a shape breakdown object to indicate the added column; displaying the modified data diagram based on information of the modified data structure at the user interface; refreshing the modified data diagram, wherein the refreshing includes querying the multidimensional data set; determining if changes have been made to the multidimensional data set since the data diagram was generated; and if changes have been made to the multidimensional set, updating the data diagram based on the changes, wherein the updating retains the modified graphical representation of nodes; generating a second pivot table corresponding to the modified data diagram as refreshed wherein the pivot table factors in the request to hide detail and the request to add a column as derived from the modified data structure including whether a shape object has been merged and whether a shape breakdown object indicates a new column; and displaying the generated second pivot table.