Patent ID: 8150832

Claim:
A method of determining a natural hierarchy for a data set, the method comprising: receiving, at a computer system, a data set, wherein the data set is stored in a database; analyzing, at the computer system, the data set to determine a plurality of categories and a plurality of quantities included within the data set; based on the determined plurality of categories and quantities, determining, at the computer system, one or more pair-wise combinations within the data set, wherein the one or more pair-wise combinations each include a first field and a second field from the database; determining, at the computer system, a distinct count for each entry in the first field grouped by the second field of the one or more pair-wise combinations; determining, at the computer system, that the distinct count for each entry has a value equal to one; based on the determination that the distinct counts for each entry have a value equal to one, setting the first field in the pair-wise combination as the parent and the second field in the pair-wise combination as the child in a default hierarchy for the data set, wherein the natural hierarchy is the most appropriate hierarchy for the data set based on the data within the data set; determining a visual representation most suited for the natural hierarchy, based on structural aspects of the natural hierarchy; and mapping features of the visual representation to the structural aspects of the natural hierarchy.