Patent ID: 8356029

Claim:
A method in a computer system for displaying entity relationship data, the method comprising: displaying a first graphical object for selecting an entity type; displaying a second graphical object for selecting an entity value corresponding to the selected entity type; querying, by operation of one or more computer processors, metadata in at least one lookup table based on the selected entity type and the selected entity value, wherein the metadata describes entity relationships between the selected entity value and other entity values of an object oriented program environment, and wherein the at least one lookup table comprises a plurality of entries, each entry including a first value representing a parent node of a respective entity, a second value representing a child node of the respective entity relationship, and a third value representing a root node of a hierarchy that includes the respective entity relationship wherein the parent node, the child node and the root node each include an entity type and a corresponding entity value included in one or more tables of a relational database; and wherein the querying forms a set of entity types including those entity types present in at least one of the parent node, the child node or the root node of an entry of the plurality of entries wherein at least one other of the parent node, the child node or the root node has an entity type that matches the selected entity type and an entity value that matches the selected entity value; and in response to querying the metadata, displaying the set of entity types via a third graphical object that allows for selecting one or more entity types included in the set of entity types, each entity type in the set of entity types representing a table of the relational database wherein a relationship exists between at least one entity value associated with the entity type and the selected entity value.