Today's corporate computing environments maintain huge amounts of data pertaining to business information. Business information may be virtually any kind of data needed to maintain a business and to comply with regulations regarding a regulated business. In the area of import and export, large amounts of data must be maintained for long periods of time. This data must remain accessible for: compliance screening, auditing, transaction tracking, and other business reasons.
Some of the complexities associated with maintaining and using vast amounts of data stored for long periods of time include, but are not limited to, data table structures and databases changing over time, hard-coded user interface screens which are non-flexible, limited pre-defined “customization” options in a user interface, etc. User interface screens are typically designed by a software developer at a user-interface design time. User-interface design time typically occurs long before actual end-user usage. Different methods for allowing end-user customization are utilized by designers and can be intended to predict a user's future needs. However, over time, screens may become outdated and show data not of interest or may not allow required user controls over certain fields. Some possible side effects of an outdated information screen may be that the screen requires excessive panning and scrolling by an end-user or there may be limited filtering capability for data on a screen (as well as many other inconveniences).
These and other problems largely arise because a developer at design time (well ahead of actual end-user usage) is attempting to implement a “one-size fits all” capability. Also, the designer is typically forced to base designs on requirements of “typical” rather than individual users. Additionally, desires of an end-user performing a particular function may change over time as the responsibilities associated with their job change. In a corporate environment, requests to update a user interface are typically provided by an end-user filling out a change request and providing that change request to a development team. The end-user is then stuck with using the old and potentially cumbersome outdated interface while the development team prioritizes multiple change requests and produces a new version of the user-interface for a potentially large number of users.
Another example of how user interfaces to data may become obsolete can occur when the structure of the data storage changes over time. Historical data may be migrated in some form or fashion to the new structure (possibly without all fields of information) or maintained in two different data sources (e.g., old database/tables for old data and new database/tables for new data). User interfaces of the prior art may not be flexible enough to adapt to changing locations of data sources.
In summary, users accessing this vast amount of data may have different requirements and preferences as to how a user desires to interact with the data. Prior art techniques exist to provide limited end-user customization for applications and screens used to access and view data. Because of these concerns and other limitations a more general method and system for an end-user to customize how their particular interface functions may be desirable. Customization may include an ability to customize what data is shown on the screen and what capabilities are available on each screen to interact with that data. Also, a user may wish to customize what is shown to limit it to data of interest without necessarily being subjected to data fields not pertaining to a task at hand. Capabilities to provide these and other customization options to an end-user are disclosed below in a non-limiting embodiment of an import export trade transaction storage and retrieval system.