Patent ID: 7359917

Claim:
Computer-implemented method for automatic detection of data types for data type dependent processing by a technical device, comprising the steps of: a) receiving a data file, b) analyzing said received data file to determine whether the format of said received data file can be detected, c) after detecting the format of the received data file, using said detected format for evaluating a whether said data type of each of at least two data items of different data type wherein the at least two data items are comprised in said received data file and are either of: an essence data type being defined to be either data which is interpretable by a device as a link pointing to reference data but with no data referring to said link or data which the device is unable to interpret as a link, a metadata subtype being defined as data interpretable by the device as a link pointing to reference data and any essence data referring to said link or of a container data type containing at least an essence data item and another data item of any data type, d) evaluating for each of the at least two data items whether the device is able to interpret the respective essence data for reproducing a physical representation of the data not interpretable as a link or the linked reference data being said respective essence data so as to indicate that the corresponding data item is either of a physical data type, if the device is able to interpret the respective essence data, or of an abstract data type, and e) supplying the result of said evaluations to the device for data type dependent processing of each of said at least two data items.