Patent ID: 7275063

Claim:
A computer data processing system including a central processing unit configured with an integrated computer control software system for the management of information data objects including automatic organization, indexing and viewing of information, said data processing system comprising: a) a computer-readable memory structured with a partitioned storage organization having at least one database for storing objects including at least one of B-Tree nodes, foundation objects, reference objects, and object metadata; b) a computer display connected to said memory for displaying objects from said data-base in a desktop-style interface; c) a computer-user interface device for inputting information to said data processing system, including information to specify objects or properties of objects, and for input of objects from external sources; d) an applications program having component architecture code processed by said central processing unit so as to scan source data of objects, create or extract metadata from said scanned objects, store said metadata in said database, and store reference objects in said database with link metadata attached to said reference objects to provide automatic organization, indexing and viewing of information objects from multiple different domain sources in said desktop-style interface while storing only one instance of said reference object; e) said component architecture code providing automatic organization, indexing and viewing of said information objects; and f) wherein said central processing unit processes by providing, during user scrolling of an expandable outline in a single window where the contents of multiple branches and multiple levels of a hierarchy are visible at once, views of objects and their containment relationships or location paths within said hierarchy in said single window on said display, so the containment hierarchies of the objects being viewed are continuously made visible in a dynamically-updating sticky path portion at the top of said window, and, as the scrolling continues past the beginning of a new open branch of the hierarchy, thus entering the branch in descending hierarchical order, the container of that branch remains visible in said dynamically-updating sticky path portion of said window that automatically expands to show the branches of the full containment path to the first item currently visible in the expandable outline, and, when scrolling continues past the end of the open branch of the hierarchy to exit the branch in ascending hierarchical order, the container of that branch is deleted from said sticky path window portion, automatically shrinking the dynamically-updated sticky path portion of said window to show as visible in said stick path portion of said window only the containment hierarchy path branches to the then-open branch of said hierarchy.