Patent ID: 8204880

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving a request for column grouping of a table having a plurality of columns, the request received from an application; executing a column grouping algorithm by a column grouping component in response to the request, the column grouping algorithm defining a column grouping order when applied causes a table rearrangement in which all identical entries within at least a first selected column are adjacent to each other and all identical entries in a second column that are in a row also having identical entries in the first column are adjacent to each other, wherein the column grouping component is an application independent and back end independent component such that an interface between the application and the column grouping component is independent of the application accessing the interface and the use of the column grouping component by the application is transparent to a user; traversing column data of the table to locate adjacent identical entries; merging adjacent identical entries; and returning the table rearrangement to the application.