International Business Machines Corporation

Gregory Christopher Hansen

Arthur Reginald Greef

Steffen Michael Fohn

Gary Lee Carter

Sharon Renee Consentino

A method and apparatus for navigating a concept hierarchy that interrelates a hierarchical presentation of the concepts of the hierarchy with a presentation of the declarations and constraints of those concepts is provided. The method includes the use of an additional computer screen presentation in which the presentation of the concepts and their declarations and restraints are interrelated. The user uses the screen to generate either a dictionary of the terms of all the concepts in the hierarchy, or a dictionary of descriptive terms of all the properties associated with those concepts. Means are provided on the screen for a user to then interrogate the generated dictionary for a desired property or concept. In a search of a dictionary of concept terms, once a desired property concept or property has been located and selected, the screen server provides, for use in continuing the search, a list of the properties that define the selected concept. If the search is of a dictionary of property terms, selection of a property produces a list of related concept terms. Irrespective of whether the list is of concept or property terms, the user can then select a term from the created list as an entry point into a tree view of the hierarchy or property presentation of a concept.

Method and apparatus for navigating multiple inheritance concept

The objective of the instant invention is to define a computer user interface display system that presents hierarchical data in an enhanced tree presentation control that blends the ease-of-use character of the familiar 'tree presentation control' with a technique for navigating more complex lattice data structures, while at the same time providing more node information by displaying configured lattice-node labels along with the node's name. Thus a primary objective of this invention is to facilitate building, maintaining and using a multiple inheritance taxonomy such as a product catalog data base by means of a multi-navigation path browsing system, which is made possible through the capability of this system's multiple inheritance capability; with indicators in the tree view to indicate ancestors such as immediate parents and further removed ancestors.

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Fort Lee, NJ, United States of America

Gregory Christopher Hansen