Patent ID: 8060483

Claim:
A method for associating a plug-in with a data file, the method comprising: storing measurement data in a data file in an enterprise system, wherein said storing measurement data includes storing meta-data associated with the measurement data, wherein the meta-data describes characteristics of the measurement data; identifying a plurality of plug-ins for extracting the meta-data from the data file; for each respective one of the plurality of plug-ins, performing an attempt to extract the meta-data from the data file using the respective plug-in, wherein a successful attempt comprises receiving the meta-data from the respective plug-in of the plurality of plug-ins; associating a first plug-in from said plurality of plug-ins with the data file based on said performing, in response to a successful attempt using the first plug-in; and identifying the data format of the data file, wherein the data format is determined by the data format associated with the first plug-in.