Patent ID: 8140555

Claim:
A computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having computer usable program code executable to perform operations for defining inductive relationships between content objects in a content management system, the operations of the computer program product comprising: storing at least two content objects on a content engine server comprising a processor and a memory, each content object stored in a repository, each repository configured to store content in a WORM device, each content object comprising a set of attributes, the set of attributes comprising an attribute value, a content object type, a taxonomy of storage location, a content object format, a location in a business process, and a content object lifecycle state; selecting each attribute of the at least two content objects for identification of an inductive relationship; comparing a first attribute value of each attribute of a first content object to a second attribute value of a corresponding attribute of a second content object; dynamically defining an explicit relationship between the first content object and the second content object in response to the first attribute value and the second attribute value satisfying a match criteria comprising a same attribute value, a same taxonomy of storage location, a same content object type, a same content object format, a same state of approval, and all objects with a matching value from unstructured content, the explicit relationship defined exclusively by the computer program product based on the inductive relationship, the explicit relationship configured for use in a user-defined content management operation rule for the at least two content objects, wherein the user-defined content management operation rule comprises applying records management controls, applying legal holds of document deletion, launching a business process, setting attributes, and modifying a folder location on related objects; preserving the dynamically defined explicit relationship in an inductive relationship database of the content engine server; making the inductive relationship database available for applying the user-defined content management operation rule to the content objects defined by the dynamically defined explicit relationship; and applying the user-defined content management operation rule to the content objects defined within the dynamically defined inductive relationship, a user-defined relationship, and the dynamically defined explicit relationship defined by the computer program product.