Michael A Sebesta

US Patent:

20030014434, Jan 16, 2003

Filed:

Jul 3, 2001

Appl. No.:

09/898879

Inventors:

Michael Sebesta - Rochester MN, US

Assignee:

International Business Machines Corporation

International Classification:

G06F015/00

US Classification:

707/500000, 707/514000

Abstract:

Disclosed is a method for providing summary information on subordinate documents in a higher level document. A document is subdivided into various hierarchical levels of subordinate documents. Summary evaluation code is provided along with the code for allowing the creation of required summary fields in the subordinate documents. The subordinate documents are tracked and those documents with relevant information that requires summarizing are identified via a tag or some other identifying method. The tag is associated with summary information that is provided to a higher level document. When one of the documents with relevant information is closed, the summary evaluation code immediately retrieves information from the document by reading the tag and mirrors the summary information in the higher level document.