Patent ID: 7620643

Claim:
A system for handling meta data for describing one or more resources, wherein the one or more resources are deliverable to a common group of users at one or more user terminals, the system including: a resource server for storing the one or more resources for delivery to at least one of the common group of users at one or more user terminals; and an administration server arranged to serve the common group of users at the one or more user terminals and for storing a set of meta data for describing the learning resources, the meta data being stored in a format, the format being operative as follows: including a comment within an XML document, the comment defining: a root tag associated with the document, the root tag having a numerical attribute representing the version of the root tag; an identification of an additional tag contained within the root tag, where the only tag contained within the root tag is the identified additional tag; a type attribute associated with the identified additional tag, the type attribute requiring a type of data contained within the identified additional tag; a name attribute associated with the identified additional tag, the name attribute requiring a name of the data contained within the identified additional tag; responsive to importing a learning resource related to the root tag, receiving meta data associated with the learning resource containing a plurality of tags; comparing the tag names of the received meta data to a list of name attributes associated with the identified additional tag contained within the root tag to identify supported meta data; extracting the meta data tag name and value pairs from the identified supported meta data, ignoring the remaining unsupported meta data; creating a meta data document containing the root tag, the version of the meta data document, and the identified additional tag, the identified additional tag containing the extracted meta data tag name as the name attribute, and the value pair associated with the meta data tag name, the value pair being contained in the meta data document in the format specified by the type attribute; responsive to a request containing the root tag to later export the learning resource, retrieving the created meta data document containing the root tag; extracting the meta data tag name from the name attribute and the meta data value associated with the meta data tag name from the root tag; and updating the meta data tag in the learning resource with any extracted changes to the meta data value associated with the meta data tag name.