Patent Document ID: 7711676
Application ID: 10986628

Base Claim:
1. A computer program product, embodied in a computer-readable medium, the computer program product being operable to cause data processing apparatus to: a) receive, during a first time duration, a first electronic document being communicated between business entities, the first electronic document comprising instances of a plurality of business data elements, the first electronic document having a format corresponding to a business communication schema, wherein the business communication schema includes a set of predefined business data elements for use in electronically communicating business data from a first business entity to a second business entity; b) identify an instance of a particular business data element in the first electronic document; c) increment a counter associated with the particular business data element in response to identifying the instance of the particular business data element in the first electronic document; d) receive, during the first time duration, a second electronic document being communicated between business entities; e) identify an instance of the particular business data element in the second electronic document; f) increment the counter associated with the particular business data element in response to identifying the instance of the particular business data element in the second electronic document; g) subsequent to elapse of the first time duration, compare the counter with a threshold value; h) based on the counter being less than the threshold value, delete the particular business data element from the business communication schema; i) prior to deleting the particular business data element from the business communication schema, notify a user if the counter is less than the threshold value; j) receive an instruction from the user to remove the particular business data element from the business communication schema: k) reset the counter when the counter is at least equal to the threshold value; l) begin a second time duration upon resetting of the counter; and m) repeat operations b) through h) for a third electronic document being communicated between business entities during the second time duration.

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Claim 15:
15. The computer program product of claim 1 wherein the first electronic document comprises a message defined in the business communication schema and the message includes the particular business data element, the computer program product being operable to cause data processing apparatus to store an identifier for the message in response to identifying an instance of the particular business data element, wherein the stored identifier for the message is associated with the particular business data element.