Patent ID: 7219102

Claim:
A method for defining data transfer from a database into a hierarchical structure, the method comprising: generating a tagging tree that corresponds to a mapping between a relational database and a hierarchical data structure, the tagging tree comprising a plurality of nodes each having a node type selected from a group of node types comprising an execution node type, a data node type, and an element node type wherein: nodes having the execution node type comprise a parameterized SQL command, nodes having the data node type are positioned in the hierarchical data structure as children to at least one node having the execution node type and each node having the data node type representing a respective data element retrieved by execution of the parameterized SQL command contained within a parent node having the execution node type, and nodes having the element node type are positioned in the hierarchical data structure as parents of at least one node having the data node type and represent a hierarchical data element tag for a respective element in the hierarchical data structure containing the respective data element represented by the child node having the data node type; traversing at least one node of the tagging tree; retrieving, in response to traversing an execution node having the execution node type, a data object from the at least one relational database according to a respective SQL command specified in the execution node; inserting into an output conforming to the hierarchical data structure, in response to traversing an element node having the element node type, a hierarchical data element tag corresponding to a content of the element node; and inserting, in response to traversing a data node having the data node type and based upon previously traversed nodes within the tagging tree, at least a portion of the data object into a position within the output conforming to the hierarchical structure, the position based upon nodes having the element node type that are parents to the data node.