US Patent 7353464 Hierarchical data navigation tool populated by a web service

A method of navigating data associated with a plurality of nodes in a hierarchy stored in a database. The nodes are organized in a plurality of levels of the hierarchy where each node has a label. Software of the invention requests and receives a set of labels associated with one or more nodes in one or more levels in the hierarchy from the database. The software displays a visual representation of the hierarchy to a user including the received labels. A user select a plurality of the displayed labels from any level in the hierarchy to process data associated with the nodes corresponding to the selected labels.