Patent ID: 8275810

Claim:
A representation of database system metadata that defines an object in a database system, the object belonging to a class thereof that is defined in the database system metadata and the database system metadata defining the object such that the database system is able to query the object, the database system metadata having been fetched by an execution of a query on the database system, the representation of the database system metadata being automatically produced by the database system from the fetched database system metadata prior to any transformation to a data definition language, the representation of the database system metadata being included in a storage device accessible to a processor, and the representation of the database system metadata being characterized in that: the representation of the database system metadata for an object in the database system belonging to a particular class of classes comprises a simplified XML (SXML) representation, wherein the simplified XML (SXML) representation comprises an aggregate metadata of the object, in which the aggregate metadata is less than metadata for all properties of the object, and the simplified XML (SXML) representation does not include metadata, which is specific to an instance of the object that is used to produce the simplified XML(SXML) representation, or metadata, which is associated with a property of the object that cannot be specified by a user during creation of the object, and the simplified XML (SXML) representation is automatically comparable by the processor with another simplified XML (SXML) representation of the database system metadata for another object belonging to the particular class from a different database system to determine one or more differences between the database system metadata for objects in database systems.