Patent ID: 7703137

Claim:
A method of facilitating transformation of survey data from being in a foreign format used by a survey-tool on a host-asset to being in a desired format, the method comprising: receiving, on a server over a network from an at least first service tool on the host asset, a block of survey data, the block including at least a first chunk of foreign data formatted according to an at least first foreign format and at least a first service-key to identify the at least first service tool which gathered the at-least first chunk, respectively, the block of survey data gathered automatically by the at least first service tool on the host asset and sent to the server; culling, by executing instructions on a processor of the server, from the block at least a first pair of a service key and a corresponding chunk of foreign data, respectively, the at least first pair including the at least first service key and the at least first chunk of foreign data; operating upon the at-least-first pair, by executing further instructions on the processor of the server, to transform respective chunks of foreign data from being in respective foreign formats into being in corresponding desired formats according to corresponding service-keys, respectively, wherein the transforming respective chunks of foreign data from being in respective foreign formats into being in corresponding desired formats includes: identifying at least a first format-interpretation (FI) service appropriate to the at-least-first foreign format based upon the at-least-first service-key, respectively; passing the at-least-first chunk to the at-least-first FI-service, respectively; and receiving at least a first parcel of data formatted to the desired format from the at-least-first FI-service, respectively, the at-least-first parcel corresponding to the at-least-first chunk, respectively; evaluating a policy active for the host asset using the at least first parcel to determine if the policy is violated; when the policy is violated, identifying a remediation mapped to the violated policy; and sending the identified remediation to the host asset.