Patent ID: 7865488

Claim:
A method for obtaining a lineage of a schema in one or more documents, comprising the steps of: providing a system, wherein said system comprises a memory, at least one hardware processor coupled to said memory, at least one network interface coupled to said at least one hardware processor, and a first distinct software module loadable into said memory and executable on said at least one hardware processor; using a schema to find a document that is most relevant to the schema, wherein said step of using a schema is carried out by said first distinct software module executing on said at least one hardware processor; obtaining one or more relevant portions of the most relevant document that is related to the schema, wherein said one or more relevant portions are acquired over said at least one network interface, by said first distinct software module executing on said at least one hardware processor; constructing a first probe set from the one or more relevant portions of the document, wherein said step of constructing is carried out by said first distinct software module executing on said at least one hardware processor; using the first probe set to discover one or more documents for obtaining lineage information, wherein said step of using the first probe set is carried out by said first distinct software module executing on said at least one hardware processor; discovering a second probe set from the one or more documents, wherein said step of discovering is carried out by said first distinct software module executing on said at least one hardware processor; and recursively using the second probe set to discover a related document, wherein said step of recursively using the second probe set is carried out by said first distinct software module executing on said at least one hardware processor.