Patent ID: 7353464

Claim:
A computer-implemented method of navigating data, said data associated with a plurality of nodes in a hierarchy stored in a database, said nodes organized in a plurality of levels of the hierarchy, each of said nodes having a label, said method comprising: requesting a set of labels associated with a plurality of nodes in one or more levels in the hierarchy from the database including a property value for at least one property associated with the hierarchy, receiving the requested set of labels from the database in accordance with the received property value; displaying to a user a visual representation of the hierarchy comprising two or more of the labels from the received set of labels in accordance with the received property value; receiving, from the user, a selection of a first plurality of the displayed labels within a first level and a second plurality of the displayed labels within a second level, each and every of said labels within the first and second levels being selectable separately by the user in the displayed visual representation of the hierarchy; and receiving, from the user, a single request to process and retrieve data associated with the plurality of nodes corresponding to only the selected, displayed labels within the first and second levels and wherein the requesting, the receiving the requested set of labels, and the displaying occur in accordance with the property value to inhibit large amounts of data from being requested or displayed at once, wherein the property value identifies one or more of the following: a location of a web service for retrieving the data associated with the plurality of nodes; a maximum quantity of labels to request, a maximum quantity of labels to display, or both; one or more labels to exclude from requesting or displaying or both; an intermediate level to display between other levels within the hierarchy; and a quantity of levels to request when requesting a set of labels associated with the plurality of nodes in one or more levels in the hierarchy from the database.