Patent ID: 7363581

Claim:
A method for generating a presentation file, comprising: providing a desktop application for generating a presentation file in a first file format related to a document of the desktop application, wherein the first file format is one of a .pot format and a .dot format; accessing a data source comprising a plurality of data records structured into a plurality of data fields, wherein the data source is in a second file format, wherein the second file format is an .xml format; providing an end user of a computer with a listing of a plurality of tags, wherein a tag is associated to one of the data fields in the data source; choosing a template file related to the first file format of the desktop application, where the template file comprises; at least one of the plurality of tags; and at least one processing instruction for Indicating how the data source is processed to build the document; and processing the template file with the data source based on the at least one of the plurality of tags and the at least one processing instruction, for building the presentation file into the document of the desktop application in the first file format for reporting information from the data source; wherein at least one of the processing instructions is a query embedded in the template file, for allowing the end user to associate the data source to the template.