Patent ID: 7979472

Claim:
A method for conditionally branching a validation in a computer system comprising: displaying a validation metadata user interface on a computer system, wherein said validation metadata user interface is configured to display at least one conditional validation expression comprising an operation to perform on a set of records of a plurality of audience layers, configured to inherit data based on an audience hierarchy such that entries not found in one audience layer are automatically obtained from another audience layer, based on a branch value; generating at least one token-based menu comprising a drop-down list of at least one token corresponding to a field or attribute of said plurality of audience layers; displaying an expression builder user interface comprising said at least one token-based menu; obtaining at least one audience name identifying an audience level of the audience hierarchy utilized in obtaining data for a validation expression comprising at least one tokenized branch value from said token-based menu; parsing said validation expression including said at least one audience name to ensure that a Boolean result value is returned upon execution of said validation expression; grouping said validation expression into a validation group comprising a plurality of validation expressions performable as a single operation; and using said validation group, including the at least one audience name, as a search filter for the plurality of audience layers.