Patent ID: 7574413

Claim:
A method for automated discovery of data, comprising: producing a resource definition for at least one computer-implemented resource, wherein the at least one resource is at least one source resource containing a set of information objects, wherein each resource definition is a source resource definition, and wherein said producing comprises defining each source resource, wherein the set of information objects defines a set of users; using the source resource definition for each at least one source resource to discover said set of users from said source resource; wherein said using the source resource definition is performed by a computer program process; defining an additional resource containing a second set of information objects, wherein each information object from said second set of information objects corresponds to a user from said set of users, wherein said defining an additional resource produces an additional resource definition; using the additional resource definition to discover said second set of information objects from said additional resource; wherein said using the additional resource definition is performed by the computer program process; and generating and storing data specifying an association of each information object from said second set of information objects with the corresponding user from said set of users and with said additional resource; wherein said generating and said storing are performed by the computer program process.