Patent ID: 7016919

Claim:
A method of managing data within an enterprise-wide, web-based framework said method comprising the steps of: marking up data to be managed within the framework with predefined types of meta-data; submitting the marked up data to the framework; assigning a unique identifier to be associated with the data and a location in which the data is to be stored; storing the unique identifier and location for subsequent access to the data; assigning a unique primary key to each item of meta-data associated with the data; storing each item of meta-data with its unique primary key, type of meta-data and the unique identifier connecting the item of meta-data with the data; providing a hierarchy of dossiers into which artifacts, defined by the meta-data stored, are classified; defining at least one specified role, team or users; defining which of the dossiers each user, role or team will be entitled to access; defining a level of entitlement that each user, role and team has with regard to each dossier, wherein a level of entitlement may be selected from a read only level; a read and edit level; a read, edit and submit new data level; a read, edit and export data level; and a read, edit, submit new data and export level; allowing a user, role or team access to only those dossiers which the user, role or team has been defined to be entitled to, and only at the entitlement level defined; allowing users, roles or teams which are entitled to write to a dossier containing the stored meta-data linked to the submitted data to submit new versions of the data, write annotations to the data, or mark the data for deletion; generating an event for each new version of the data, each annotation to the data, or each marking of the data for deletion; wherein each of these functions is stored with the mete-data associated with the data and is linked to the unique identifier of the data; storing each event with an associated time stamp; wherein the submission of marked up data generates an event, and wherein other predefined manipulations of the data generate events; and generating a traceability report based on the events, thereby creating a history of all events that have occurred with regard to the data.