Patent ID: 7640496

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for producing a storage area network resource management report view for presentation in a graphical user interface, the method comprising: obtaining a series of core report definitions, each core report definition defining a set of report layouts that describe visual arrangements between associations of report parameters that are related to at least one specific type of managed entity; obtaining at least one structure definition that defines attributes of data associated with the report parameters defined in the core report definitions, wherein the at least one structure definition further includes a link definition that defines linkable report columns and link targets for report layouts defined in the series of core report definitions allowing report dependencies to exist between report layouts; parsing the series of core report definitions in conjunction with the at least one structure definition to produce a set of report definition objects that contain references to report parameters defined according to the attributes of the at least one structure definition; displaying a plurality of report selections in the graphical user interface, each report selection corresponding to a report layout in at least one of the core report definitions; receiving a user selection of a report selection in the graphical user interface; and parsing the report selection to identify the report layout identified by the report selection from which to dynamically generate the report view; caching the report view for a predetermined amount of time upon determining that the frequency of data changes in the report view is below a predetermined threshold level; obtaining a data set corresponding to the report layout identified by the report selection, the data set including data values to be presented as the data in the graphical user interface; applying the data values in the data set to the report parameters corresponding to the report selection to populate the report layout identified by the report selection to dynamically generate the report view; and providing the at least one report view for rendering in the graphical user interface.