Patent ID: 7707490

Claim:
A processor implemented method for designing and generating a report, comprising: declaring, in a report design, data to be placed in at least one column, wherein said declaring comprises at least one first word and further comprises a first human readable declarative marking comprising a non-word marking applied to the at least one first word to indicate whether or not the at least one column can be automatically expanded into a plurality of columns when generating a report from said report design, as necessary to dynamically accommodate present and future data in a database that is identifiable by said at least one first word; declaring, in the report design, data to be placed in at least one row, wherein said declaring comprises at least one second word and further comprises a second human readable declarative marking comprising a non-word marking applied to the at least one second word to indicate whether or not the at least one row can be automatically expanded into a plurality of rows when generating said report from said report design, as necessary to dynamically accommodate present and future data in said database that is identifiable by said at least one second word; declaring, in the report design, data to be placed in at least one nested row, wherein said declaring comprises at least one third word and further comprises a third human readable declarative marking comprising a non-word marking applied to the at least one third word to indicate whether or not the at least one nested row can be automatically expanded into a plurality of nested rows when generating said report from said report design, as necessary to dynamically accommodate present and future data in said database that is identifiable by said at least one third word; processing said report design using report processing software to query said database for said data to be placed in at least one column, for said data to be placed in at least one row, and for said data to be placed in at least on nested row; interpreting data retrieved from said database by at least one data extension of a plurality of data extensions included in said report processing software, each data extension corresponding to a type of data source; generating said report by said report processing software, wherein said generating comprises at least responding to said first declarative marking by generating a plurality of columns to dynamically accommodate data in said database that is identifiable by said at least one first word; and rendering said report in an output file format by at least one rendering extension of a plurality of rendering extensions included in said report processing software, each rendering extension corresponding to a report output type.