Patent ID: 7512588

Claim:
A method of searching for data in heterogeneous data sources with a computer system, the method comprising: receiving a request for data at a given federated data source; and from the given federated data source, retrieving data from a plurality of datastores, including: data from one or more terminal data repositories, data, with a schema conceptual view of the data, from one or more other federated data sources, wherein the one or more other federated data sources are recursively arranged, and data, without a schema conceptual view of the data, from one or more search gateway data sources, said search gateway data sources expanding the received request into other data sources, wherein said other data sources include at least a file system and a relational database; the given federated data source providing a unified schema conceptual view of: (a) the data from the plurality of datastores, (b) the data from the terminal data repositories, (c) the data and schema conceptual view from the other federated data sources, and (d) the data from one or more search gateway data sources.