Patent ID: 7849059

Claim:
A method of identifying data to store in a metabase, the method comprising: monitoring with a journaling module, data interactions between at least one application and one or more of a plurality of data objects stored in a file system, wherein the journaling module is separate from the application and wherein the journaling module populates an index with entries about the data interactions; displaying with one or more computer processors a user interface that allows a user to input a user-defined tag expression, wherein the user-defined tag expression comprises information associated with data interactions the user desires to track; tagging entries in the index that meet the user-defined tag expression, wherein the tagging associates a tag identifier with the entries; scanning entries in the index to identify at least a first entry from the index associated with the tag identifier, wherein the first entry corresponds to a first data interaction with a first data object meeting the tag expression; obtaining from the index first metadata about the data interaction associated with the first entry; accessing the first data object associated with the first entry, to obtain second metadata, wherein the second metadata comprises information about the first data object that the user desires to track; obtaining from the index third metadata, wherein the third metadata comprises the tag identifier associated with the first entry; updating a metabase with the first, second and third metadata such that the metabase associates the tag identifier with first metadata obtained from the index and the second metadata obtained from the first data object, wherein the metabase is stored separately from the first data object and separately from the file system containing the first data object, wherein said updating further comprises determining which of a plurality of metabases comprises records storing first, second or third metadata associated with the first data object; and in response to a user request for information about data interactions associated with the user-defined tag expression, accessing the first, the second or the third metadata in the metabase to determine data interactions that meet the user-defined tag expression without accessing either the plurality of data objects or the file system.