1. A computer implemented system that facilitates graphical design of a regular expression, comprising a memory having stored therein the following computer executable components: a data store component that stores information; a data view component that enables a user to display one or more parts of the stored information, wherein the stored information is stored in a plurality of different data formats; a metadata component that defines how data files of each different data format type are to be parsed, such that a generic parser is usable for parsing the plurality of different stored data types; a data selection component that enables the user to graphically and arbitrarily select any portion of text from the displayed information, regardless of the data format; a rendering component that automatically generates a regular expression comprising one or more specialized characters or character sets that have a predefined meaning for parsing text, the regular expression being derived from and based on the graphically and arbitrarily selected portion of text, wherein the rendered regular expression comprises a custom metadata annotation applied by the generic parser indicating the data type of the selected portion of text, and wherein the automatically generated regular expression is displayed in syntactical form including the one or more specialized characters and/or character sets; and a processor that executes the computer executable components, wherein the rendering component comprises a heuristics component that employs at least one of a probabilistic-based or statistical-based analysis to automatically generate the regular expression.
1. A computer implemented system that facilitates graphical design of a regular expression, comprising a memory having stored therein the following computer executable components: a data store component that stores information; a data view component that enables a user to display one or more parts of the stored information, wherein the stored information is stored in a plurality of different data formats; a metadata component that defines how data files of each different data format type are to be parsed, such that a generic parser is usable for parsing the plurality of different stored data types; a data selection component that enables the user to graphically and arbitrarily select any portion of text from the displayed information, regardless of the data format; a rendering component that automatically generates a regular expression comprising one or more specialized characters or character sets that have a predefined meaning for parsing text, the regular expression being derived from and based on the graphically and arbitrarily selected portion of text, wherein the rendered regular expression comprises a custom metadata annotation applied by the generic parser indicating the data type of the selected portion of text, and wherein the automatically generated regular expression is displayed in syntactical form including the one or more specialized characters and/or character sets; and a processor that executes the computer executable components, wherein the rendering component comprises a heuristics component that employs at least one of a probabilistic-based or statistical-based analysis to automatically generate the regular expression. 2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the data selection component enables the user to mark one or more portions of the regular expression, wherein the rendering component dynamically displays an output associated with the user's application of the marked regular expression on one or more parts of the stored information, and wherein the rendering component marks the output in association with the marked one or more portions of the regular expression to assist the user in at least one of validating or understanding the automatically generated regular expression.