Patent ID: 7484171

Claim:
A document management system, comprising: a document storage device configured to store at least one XML electronic document describing metadata related to broadcasting a plurality of television programs, the XML electronic document having a hierarchical structure comprising an upper structural element and a plurality of lower structural elements located below the upper structural element in the hierarchical structure to describe broadcast information and content information for each of the television programs; and a document receiving device coupled to the document storage device to receive updates to the XML electronic document, each of the received updates including the upper structural element and updated information for a subset of the plurality of lower structural elements, wherein the received update has an upper structure version value for the upper structural element and a respective lower structure version value for each lower structural element in the subset, the upper structure version value being different from one or more of the lower structure version values, and wherein the document receiving device is configured to process one of multiple versions of the XML electronic document according to the version values in the updates to the XML electronic document, wherein a lower structure version value is updated for one of the lower structural elements when content in that lower structural element of the XML electronic document is changed, and the updated lower structure version value for that lower structural element is used as the upper structure version value for the upper structural element, and wherein a type of the content of the lower element is added into the upper structure version value of the upper structural element.