Patent ID: 7359916

Claim:
A database management system comprising: a database layer including a database for storing data; a spreadsheet layer for representing data from the database layer in a spreadsheet in accordance with a view, wherein the view causes at least one of a delivery of data to the spreadsheet layer from the database layer and a maintenance of data from the spreadsheet layer to the database layer; and an interface layer arranged to interface the database layer with the spreadsheet layer, wherein the database layer stores, in the database, data corresponding to a plurality of entities of a plurality of entity types in a plurality of tables, respectively, wherein the plurality of entities are linked by a plurality of relations in a predetermined structure, wherein the interface layer comprises a semantic net server for transforming the structure of the data in the database layer into a semantic net, wherein the view is defined in terms of the semantic net to facilitate an interoperability between the database layer and the spreadsheet layer, and wherein the semantic net server stores a mapping of the structure of the database onto a plurality of terms and relation types in the semantic net.