Patent Document ID: 9020979
Application ID: 13344231

Base Claim:
1. A method for capturing rich database metadata associated with a database, comprising: enhancing a database catalog with the database metadata, wherein a database management system manages the database catalog, wherein the database catalog allows the database management system to manage application constraints, user defined types, complete data structures and physical representation of data on behalf of applications associated with the database, relieving the applications of a requirement to ensure integrity associated with the data, by: capturing partitioned column metadata of a database, for columns referenced by one or more applications referencing the database, as mappings defined by a plurality of constraint statements, wherein the database management system, via the database catalog, manages constraints associated with the columns instead of the one or more applications; defining non-standard user-defined types of the database referenced by the one or more applications referencing the database according to a schema, wherein the database management system, via the database catalog, manages the non-standard user-defined types of the database instead of the one or more applications; defining physical representations of the columns of the database according to the schema, wherein the physical representations of the columns are referenced by the one or more applications referencing the database, wherein the database management system, via the database catalog, manages the physical representations of the columns of the database instead of the one or more applications; storing the defined mappings, the defined user-defined types, and the defined physical representations of columns to the database catalog of the database; managing application constraints, the non-standard user-defined types, and the physical representation of the columns by a database management system for the database on behalf of the one or more applications referencing the database using the defined mappings, the defined user-defined types, and the defined physical representations of the columns stored to the database catalog, wherein logic for managing the application constraints, the non-standard user-defined types, and the physical representation of the columns are not stored in the one or more applications; and wherein the enhanced database catalog comprises application constraints, user-defined types, and physical representation of the data in a metadata format that integrates with an existing database metadata model.

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Claim 2:
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the capturing of the partitioned column metadata of the database as mappings defined by the plurality of constraint statements comprises: breaking down a partitioned column of the database into a series of case statements, wherein each case statement defines a new mapping depending on a specific value of a data element embedded in the partitioned column or embedded in another column of the database.