Patent ID: 8250590

Claim:
A system to provide seamless multiple format metadata abstraction, the system comprising: an enterprise information system (EIS) comprising a first processor and a first memory; a client comprising a second processor and a second memory; an adapter in electronic communication with the EIS and in electronic communication with the client, the adapter comprising: a metadata application programming interface (API) operating on two or more different metadata formats, the metadata API comprising: an abstraction module configured to register and instantiate a type class and a property class for the two or more different metadata formats, the type class configured to convert type metadata from an original format of first metadata to a common metadata format and the property class configured to convert property metadata from the original format into the common metadata format in accordance with the metadata API and convert first metadata of an incoming object and additional metadata from an annotation map contained by the first metadata into the common format useable by the adapter, wherein the additional metadata is not part of the original format of the first metadata, the two or more different metadata formats further comprise an application specific metadata representation format, the type metadata comprises a type name, property iterations, property lists, property objects, annotations, operation-specific object metadata, and key properties and the property metadata comprises a property containing type, a default property value, a property name, a property class, a property containment, a max length of the property, annotations for the property, and property key information; and a communication module configured to communicate the converted metadata to the adapter in the common format, the adapter processing the first metadata and the additional metadata independent of the original format of the first metadata.