US Patent 7237187 Interactively comparing records in a database

The present invention can allow an electronic catalog or other set of items to be searched and compared interactively. In one embodiment, the invention includes displaying a list of items in an electronic catalog, each item corresponding to a row of the display, each row having values corresponding to attributes of the corresponding items arranged into attribute columns, grouping some of the displayed items based on a selected attribute upon receiving a grouping command so that the grouped items are displayed in a single row, and expanding the grouped items upon receiving an expand command so that the grouped items are each displayed in a separate row. The embodiment further includes removing a row corresponding to an item or to grouped items from the display upon receiving a row remove command and removing a column corresponding to an attribute of the items from the display upon receiving a column remove command.