Patent ID: 7945601

Claim:
A method, executable in a computer system, for generating a report, comprising: retrieving data from two or more data sources, wherein the two or more data sources comprise at least a first data type and a second data type; a user interface operable to receive one or more parameters from a user; one or more databases store a data translation file; an approval workflow engine in communication with the one or more databases and a user interface operable to receive one or more parameters from a user: generating a structured data file for the retrieved data; sending the structured data and a first report template and a second report template to an XML publisher (XMLP) component, wherein the first report template and the second report template are independent from the first data type and second data type; and generating a first report based on the first data type and the first data template using the XMLP component and generating a second report based on the second data type and the second template using the XMLP component, wherein the first report is in a different format from the first report template and the second report is in a different format from the second report template; retrieving the data translation file from the one or more databases, and wherein the approval workflow engine is operable to translate one or more items of code data, in the retrieved data, into text data according to the data translation file; storing the text data in the structured data file; receiving commands from the approval workflow engine; and issuing the commands to the publishing component.