Patent ID: 8005867

Claim:
A method of measuring a value of an element in an information repository containing a plurality of elements, said method comprising: selecting a target element; analyzing structural relationships between the target element and other elements in the information repository; identifying at least one common attribute of the target element and each of the other elements; and a processor of a data processing system calculating a value for the target element in dependence upon the target element's hierarchical relationship to the other elements and the identified at least one common attribute, wherein each element of the plurality of elements further comprises an element type characterizing each element's type, wherein at least two elements of the plurality of elements have a different element type, wherein the structural relationship is a parent-child hierarchical relationship, and wherein the method further comprises: calculating the value for the target element as a structural reuse of the target element by element type as equal to the number of parent elements of each element type that list the target element as one of their children; and calculating total structural reuse as equal to a sum of the calculated structural reuse of the target element by element type over all of element types comprised by the plurality of elements.