Patent Document ID: 5418957
Application ID: 07849103

Base Claim:
1. In a network of one or more computers having data structures relating to programs, file layouts, and database schema, the data structures being stored in Include Files, wherein each of the data structures comprises one or more data items, each of the Include Files is associated with a Support File, and each of the Include Files is accessible from an Include File Dictionary (IFD) that includes a tree-structured directory for mapping the Include Files to the network and access control information, a method for enabling a user to interactively edit or create Include Files so as to comply with a set of logical data element definitions derived from the data structures and stored in a Data Element Dictionary (DED), the method comprising the steps of: 1) retrieving a user selected Include File from the IFD into a text editor; 2) editing or creating data structures of the selected Include File from the text editor; 3) validating a user selected data item of the data structures against the logical data element definitions in the DED from the text editor, and if valid logical data element definitions for the selected data item exist, performing the steps of: displaying logical data element definitions that are valid for the selected data item; replacing the selected data item in the text editor with a user selected one of the displayed logical data element definitions; storing cross-reference information in a Support file corresponding to the selected Include File, the cross-reference information referencing a logical data element definition in the DED corresponding to the selected data item in the text editor; or if valid logical data element definitions for the selected data items do not exist, performing the steps of: proposing a logical data element definition by the user, in accordance with a set of rules of defined in the DED, in the DED and subject to approval by a system administrator; replacing the selected data item in the text editor with the proposed logical data element definition; 4) auditing the selected Include File using the support file, including cross-references, and calculating a dictionary compliance percentage to provide a summary of the compliance of the selected Include File to the DED.

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Claim 12:
12. A method as claimed in claim 1 wherein the step of auditing compares a representation of data items in the selected Include File with a representation of a corresponding logical data element definition in the DED by utilizing the cross-references in the Support File, the steps comprising: reading the selected Include File lines that correspond to legal data items to get a count of a total number of data items in the selected Include File; for each line containing a data item in the selected Include File, reading the cross-references in the Support File and locating a cross-reference corresponding to the data item in each line; reading the data item's representation in the Support File, and performing a comparison against a representation of a corresponding data element in the DED to check for the following: if the data element does not have a standard indicator set to `S` a warning is issued; if neither the name of the data item or representation matches the name of the data element or the data elements representation, then the data item is not compliant to the data element, with the following exception: if a grandfather switch is set to `G` to represent grandfathering, or `E` to represent an exemption; summarizing data from the cross-references to provide the dictionary compliance percentage, by dividing the count of the total number of data items in the Include File by the count of the number of the data items compliant to the data element standard.