Patent ID: 7069514

Claim:
A development system for developing computer models for the collection and display of data, the development system comprising: a component builder that provides functionality for generating reusable components for collecting data from back-end data sources, including back-end data sources associated with business elements, whereby a user may create a reusable component that represents a particular type of business element; a view builder that provides functionality for generating reusable views that correspond to specific components generated by the component builder, whereby a user can generate one or more views that specify how data collected by a corresponding component is to be displayed, wherein the view builder provides functionality for inserting a view corresponding to a first component within a view corresponding to a second component; a catalog that contains components generated with the component builder; and a module that provides functionality for selecting components from the catalog, creating multiple instances of a selected component to represent multiple elements of a common type, and connecting an instance to a respective source of back-end data to allow that instance to collect data.