Patent ID: 7580947

Claim:
A system for facilitating link analysis, the system comprising: at least one computer storage device comprising a database adapted to store data regarding a knowledge domain, the data including: generic nodes, with each generic node defining properties of a node that can be instantiated in the knowledge domain; node instances, with each node instance corresponding to one of the generic nodes and representing an entity in the knowledge domain; generic links, with each generic link defining at least one of properties and functions of a link that can be instantiated in the knowledge domain; and link instances, with each link instance corresponding to one of the generic links and representing a relationship between specified node instances; and a taxonomy management utility adapted to automatically manage the data stored in the database of the computer storage device, wherein the taxonomy management utility includes a set of instructions that govern a construction of the generic nodes and the node instances and the generic links and link instances by: maintaining uniqueness of the generic nodes and the generic links stored in the database; defining at least one hierarchy of generic nodes for use in maintaining uniqueness of node instances stored in the database, wherein different levels of the at least one hierarchy of generic nodes represent entities with different degrees of specificity; maintaining the uniqueness of the node instances by checking the hierarchy of generic nodes to determine if potential node instance data is already represented by a node instance based on a different generic node; instantiating a new node instance representing the potential node instance data based on a determination that another node instance corresponding to the same potential node instance data is not already stored in the database; and storing the new node instance representing the potential node instance data in the computer storage device.