Patent ID: 8032552

Claim:
A system for viewing data, the system comprising: an Internet based data viewing engine; and a data store, where the data store holds at least: viewable supply chain data; and metadata associated with the viewable supply chain data, the metadata employable by the Internet based data viewing engine to control, at least in part, the presentation of the viewable data, wherein the metadata associated with the viewable supply chain data stores information concerning at least one of view heading information, query criteria information, view result information, additional information link information, personalization information, display parameters, and content parameters; wherein the Internet based data viewing engine is configured to: select one or more items of the viewable supply chain data and the associated metadata in response to a user query received over a network; and display, over the network, the one or more items of the viewable supply chain data on a user interface tangibly displayed on a display device, wherein a presentation of the one or more items of the viewable supply chain data on the user interface is controlled, at least in part, by the metadata associated with the one or more items of the viewable supply chain data.