Deborah E Cummings

US Patent:

50479598, Sep 10, 1991

Filed:

Sep 13, 1988

Appl. No.:

7/244052

Inventors:

Timothy T. Phillips - Edgewood KY
Deborah C. Cummings - Villa Hills KY
Emily S. Divita - Erlanger KY
Steve M. Bryan - Cincinnati OH

Assignee:

Square D Company - Palatine IL

International Classification:

G06F 1520

US Classification:

364521

Abstract:

A data display, preferably having screens or windows, is built from data in a data base according to a hierarchy of display knowledge. Therefore, the data values themselves are separate from the knowledge or rules that specify how the data values are displayed to a user. In particular, the display knowledge is arranged in a hierarchy so that an individual item of display knowledge may be applicable to a wide range of data values representing the attributes of a number of different objects. In many cases, the range of data values or the attributes which the data values represent can be changed without any need to change the display knowledge. In other cases, only minor changes to the display knowledge are needed to properly display values for new or different data. These minor changes, for example, need only be made by changing the lowest level in the hierarchy of the display knowledge or associating items of display knowledge in the lowest level with different display knowledge in the higher levels. In a preferred embodiment, the highest level of the hierarchy of display knowledge defines individual display screens, and the lowest level defines fields of successive character locations on the display screens.