Patent ID: 7844892

Claim:
A method for graphical display of selected data from a data source for use in a business intelligence reporting system, the method comprising: determining interactively with a user a generalized design of a report for subsequent displaying of the selected data in sub-charts; selecting series, categories and measures of interest for inclusion in a report, and storing the series, the categories and the measures of interest in a collection of display rules; extracting a first set of data pertaining to the series, the categories and the measures of interest from the data source; storing the first set of data in a crosstab; selecting a subset of the first set of data in the crosstab; creating a virtual chart containing the selected subset of the data; creating a sub-chart of the virtual chart according to the stored collection of display rules; and displaying the sub-chart of the virtual chart using the stored collection of display rules, wherein the sub-chart is limited to displaying less than all the categories included in the virtual chart at any given time, and wherein the sub-chart includes navigation keys that allow the user to navigate through all the categories included in the virtual chart, and wherein the sub-chart includes retention boxes that allow a user to designate specific categories to remain displayed in fixed positions on the sub-chart when the user navigates through all the other categories included in the virtual chart using the navigation keys, wherein the navigating includes shifting the categories on the sub-chart.