Patent ID: 7716178

Claim:
A data processing system, comprising: a processor; a relational database comprising database tables and relationships among the database tables, the database tables containing data belonging to a set of predefined entities, wherein each entity of the set of predefined entities has a predefined name; an application program, executed by the processor, configured to process the data belonging to a selected one of the predefined entities; and an interface configured to provide the data belonging to the selected predefined entity to the application program as a self-contained temporary table stored in volatile memory, the interface comprising: a mapping table listing a main table, and configured to assign the main table to the selected predefined entity, the main table including data belonging to the selected predefined entity, and wherein the main table is a root of relationship paths among related tables that relate to the selected predefined entity; means for receiving a first request from the application program, and, in response to the first request, for providing, from the mapping table, a list of the predefined entity names to the application program for display and for user selection of the selected predefined entity; means for receiving a second request including the selected predefined entity; and means for generating, in response to the second request, the self-contained temporary table, as a spreadsheet, by reading the main table from the mapping table into a first tab of the spreadsheet, resolving the relationship paths in the main table to locate the related tables, and reading the related tables into additional tabs of the spreadsheet, wherein the spreadsheet includes a different tab for each database table of the plurality of database tables that contains data belonging to the selected one of the predefined entities.