Patent ID: 8060817

Claim:
A method of displaying non-character based graphical representations of multidimensional data, the method comprising: displaying multidimensional data in a table format comprising a plurality of cells arranged in a plurality of rows and a plurality of columns, a designated column of the plurality of columns corresponding to a common dimension, such that the cells of each row share a value of the common dimension in the designated column, the value of each cell of the common dimension having an associated hierarchical level according to a parent or child relationship between the cell of the designated column and at least one other cell of the designated column; and displaying a hierarchy column having a plurality of cells arranged in rows, such that each cell of the hierarchy column visually corresponds to a respective cell of the common dimension, displaying the hierarchy column comprising displaying, in each cell of the hierarchy column, the hierarchical level associated with the respective cell of the common dimension using a non-character and non-numerical based graphical representation, wherein displaying the non-character and non-numerical based graphical representation of the respective hierarchical level of the cells comprises displaying graphical bars, the graphical bars indented to indicate the respective hierarchical level of the data in the respective rows containing each of the cells and wherein each cell of the hierarchy column comprises one of the graphical bars.