Patent ID: 8838597

Claim:
A method for extracting metadata, and for determining one or more data sources that is able to provide an answer to a query, comprising the steps of: capturing metadata of one or more data sources at least in part in accordance with information provided by a user; capturing metadata of one or more data sets comprising the one or more data sources at least in part in accordance with information provided by the user; capturing metadata of one or more fields comprising one or more of the data sets at least in part in accordance with information provided by the user; capturing metadata of content within zero or more of the fields in accordance with an analysis of data contained therein; and storing the captured metadata to a non-volatile computer readable storage medium; receiving a query having one or more query elements; accessing a metadata index formed by categorizing the captured metadata into one or more groups, and indexing the metadata; matching one or more of the query elements to one or more metadata elements in the one or more groups of the metadata index; returning one or more data sources able to answer the query; calculating a ranking of the returned one or more data sources corresponding to the ability of each data source to answer the query in accordance with a level of match between the query and the metadata index elements associated with the particular data source; adjusting a ranking of one or more of the returned one or more datasets in accordance with one or more determined missing portions thereof relative to a business category of the query; and returning one or more data sources having the highest ranking.