Patent ID: 8380493

Claim:
A system for associating semantic meanings with data elements, comprising: a processor; and memory storing: a message dictionary for each of a plurality of message types, each message dictionary for a message type defining locations of data elements within messages of the message type; a messaging module configured to receive a message having data elements and to associate a message dictionary with the message based on characteristics of the message, wherein the message dictionary associated with the message is configured to identify a message type of the message and to identify lexical portions of the message; a taxonomy module configured to provide a taxonomy that includes taxonomic concepts and semantic meanings associated with the taxonomic concepts and to automatically tag data elements in the lexical portions of the message based on locations in which the data elements occurred within the message by: referencing the taxonomy for taxonomic concepts that provide semantic meanings for the data elements in the lexical portions of the message, linking the taxonomic concepts to locations in the message defined by the message dictionary associated with the message, storing the data elements of the message in storage locations of a storage module in a structured format, and associating data definition tags with the data elements of the message, each data definition tag for a data element of the message linking a storage location of the message in the storage module with a taxonomic concept of the taxonomy and a location of the data element in the message defined by the message dictionary associated with the message; and a data definition tag repository configured to store the data definition tags and to enable the data elements stored in the storage module to be queried based on the semantic meanings for the data elements provided by the taxonomic concepts.