Patent ID: 7383159

Claim:
A method, comprising: presenting a list of measure types and schema elements against which measures associated with the measure type can be processed; receiving a selection for a desired measure type and one or more schema elements from the list; presenting a new list for available measures defined within the desired measure type; receiving a new selection for a desired measure from the new list; and presenting metadata for the desired measure to a requester, wherein the metadata defines processing associated with the desired measure which is to be processed against the one or more selected schema elements, wherein each of the available measures and the desired measure are aggregations associated with multiple calculations, and wherein at least one of the available measures uses multiple layers of aggregation as a two-step aggregation, and wherein the presented metadata includes a description of configured parameters for processing the desired measure, the description includes an analysis schema and level for a data store being used with the desired measure, calculation information for the desired measure, filter information that can be used with the desired measure, ordering information for the desired measure, and display information for the desired measure, and wherein the description describes how the desired measure goes about achieving a calculation associated with the calculation information.