Patent ID: 7398275

Claim:
A computerized method for encoding an instance document representing a content description, the method comprising: determining a context node from a plurality of context nodes in the content description, the plurality of context nodes corresponding to description schemes for a particular multimedia content described by the instance document, wherein the plurality of context nodes are represented in the encoded instance document as a plurality of data structures; obtaining a schema associated with the context node, the schema defining required attributes, optional attributes, required elements, and optional elements for the context node, with the optional attributes and optional elements having an order; creating a required attributes section containing a value for each required attribute for the context node; creating an optional attributes section containing a value for each optional attribute for the context node that appears in the content description; creating a required elements section containing a value for each required element for the context node; creating an optional elements section containing a value for each optional element for the context node that appears in the content description; and generating the encoded instance document comprising the attributes and elements sections defined by the schema for each of the plurality of context nodes and a context-node reset code specifying an address for a next context node in the content description for each context node except a last context node, wherein the encoded instance document is a compressed representation of the instance document.