Patent ID: 7873675

Claim:
A method of importing data in an enterprise resource planning system from a source table in a first system to a target table in a second system comprising: receiving data records organized within rows of a first table, wherein the first table comprises a plurality of rows and a plurality of columns including a first record identification reference column comprising one or more record identification references, wherein each data record is stored within a row of the first table and organized among the columns of the first table, and a record identification reference of the first record identification reference column relates a first data record in an associated row of the first table with a record identification of a second data record in the first system; copying the row contents of the first table to a first temporary staging table; organizing the second data record within a row of a second temporary staging table having a record identification column comprising one or more record identifications uniquely identifying each data record of the second staging table within the target system; assigning a new record identification to the second data record during importation of the second data record to the target system; and executing a database query on the entire first table to merge the data records of the first table with a first target table within a target system, wherein executing the database query to merge the data records comprises: merging row contents of the first temporary staging table with the first target table; and executing a join statement between the first record identification reference column of the first temporary staging table and the reference identification column of the second temporary staging table, wherein the first record identification reference column comprises record identifications of the data records of the second table and the record identification column of the second temporary staging table comprises the new record identifications of the data records of the second temporary staging table; and relating the updated record identification reference of the first data record of the first target table with the new record identification of the second data record.