Patent ID: 8751919

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for viewing global annotations, comprising: loading a first set of data into a memory associated with a first application of a first type executing on a processor; identifying one or more data elements in the first set of data that have been anchored with global annotations by a second application of a second type and not annotated by the first application, wherein each global annotation for a given data element is stored by an annotation system independently from a representation of the given data element used by each of a plurality of software applications to represent the given data element, wherein each of the identified data elements are identified from a registry maintained by the annotation system, and wherein an annotation index, separate from the registry, is provided to store a reference to each data element to which a global annotation has been anchored, based on a unique identifier of each annotated data element; providing an indication of the identified data elements; and providing an interface, accessible from the first application, allowing a user to view, independently from the second application, a global annotation for a selected one of the identified data elements, wherein at least one of the global annotations was previously created from a second application loading a second set of data containing a data element to which the at least one global annotation is anchored, wherein the global annotation for the selected data element is identified from the annotation index, wherein a format of the global annotation is selected from a plurality of predefined annotation data structures for a plurality of different data element types, and wherein the global annotation created for the selected data element, when viewed, presents annotation content for the global annotation and a context identifying how the selected data element was used in the second set of data when the global annotation was created.