To eliminate troublesome and complicated work requiring a time such as an data input and data extraction to reduce a burden for a user, when generating a graph from a tabulated report.

Structure of the acquired report is automatically recognized to extract the required data for forming the graph out of the report (step 505). A prescribed graph generation rule is correlated to a tabulation item in the report, using the extracted data (step 510). When the user clicks the tabulation item by a mouse, the graph is automatically generated using the extracted data, pursuant to the correlated graph generation rule (step 515).