A high-level notation for developing network management applications: Resource description and manipulation language

The increasing size, distribution and heterogeneity of today's networks make their management very costly, inefficient and error prone. We are seeking to replace labor-intensive network management with one that is software-intensive. This paper proposes a high-level notation, Resource Description and Manipulation Language (RDML), for facilitating the development of network management applications. As an important aspect of the Architecture of Self-Management Distributed System (ASMDS)([1]), RDML is defined as a purely declarative language and serves to describe Virtual Managed Object Class (VMOC), including its attributes and available methods. VMOC can unite object attributes from different sources and methods enforced on the object attributes into a virtual managed class. RDML bridges the gap between management applications and management data from variety of resources. Because of the simple syntax and the strong describing ability of RDML, it is easy to define VMOCs in terms of management goals.