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Systems Management: Reference Model

Systems Management: Reference Model
Copyright © 1997 The Open Group

Glossary

activation

Copying the persistent form of an object's methods and data into an executable address space to allow execution of methods.

administrator

A person who has responsibility for administering a network of systems; the person who initiates Management Tasks.

agent

An entity which performs an application service in response to a request from a Manager entity as described in the network management view of the reference model.

application object

Applications and their task-oriented components that are managed within an object-oriented system.

class

An implementation that can be instantiated to create multiple objects with the same behaviour. An object is an instance of a class.

client

An entity issuing a request for a service in the client server model.

common facilities

In the OMG object model, common facilities are objects which provide facilities useful in many applications.

communications mechanism

A means of transferring management information between entities. The precise method of transfer is unspecified, but specific instances of the Communication Mechanism may be defined. Transfer may be wholly within one system or may be between systems.

communications service

The interface to the Communications Mechanism. The Communications Service provides access to the Communications Mechanism in a way that is, as far as possible, independent of the actual implementation of the Communications Mechanism.

data store

A repository of information about Managed Objects. This may be a conceptual repository.

deactivation

Copying the object's data from an executable address space back to the object's persistent form.

event

An activity that takes place asynchronously within a managed Resource and is communicated to client entities.

filtering

Filtering entails the application of a set of tests to each member of the set of previously scoped Managed Objects to extract a subset of objects. Managed Object selection involves two phases: scoping and filtering.

IDL

The interface definition language defined by the Object Request Broker in the OMG object management architecture.

implementation

See Object Implementation.

Implementation Repository

The Implementation Repository contains information that allows the Object Request Broker in the OMG object management architecture to locate and activate implementations of objects.

inheritance

The construction of a definition by incremental modification of other definitions. Inheritance can apply to both object interfaces and object implementations.

Interface Definition Language

A language which describes the operations, parameters, and exceptions of the requests on an object. An interface definition language is used to define object interfaces.

Interface Repository

The Interface Repository is a service in the OMG object management architecture that provides persistent objects which represent the IDL information about OMG compliant objects in a form available at run time.

Managed Object

A Managed Object is an object-oriented encapsulation of a Resource that is subject to management.

Managed Resource

A Resource that is subject to management and is capable of being represented by a Managed Object.

management function

An encapsulation of functionality used to perform some aspect of management.

Management Task

An encapsulation of an administrator's view of a set of management functions. A Management Task corresponds to a human-oriented activity that must be performed in order to manage a system. Management tasks can be encapsulated as management objects.

Manager

A Manager is the initiator of a management interaction. It is a software component that requests some operation to be performed by a managed Resource.

method

The executable code in an object implementation that is executed to perform a requested service.

notification

Information about an event which is communicated to client entities that have registered to be informed about such events.

object

A combination of a state and a set of methods that explicitly embodies an abstraction characterised by the behaviour of relevant requests. An object encapsulates the state and operations which provide a service to a client.

object handle

A value that unambiguously identifies an object in an object-oriented system. In the OMG model, an object reference acts as the object handle. In the OSI model, a Distinguished Name acts as the object handle.

object implementation

A definition that provides the information needed to create an object, allowing the object to participate in providing an appropriate set of services in an object-oriented system. An object implementation typically includes a description of the data structure used to represent the object state and definitions of the methods that access that object state.

object interface

A description of a set of possible uses of an object. Specifically, an interface describes a set of potential requests in which an object can meaningfully participate. Object interfaces are often defined using an interface definition language.

object reference

An object handle in the OMG object management architecture.

Object Request Broker

An ORB is the implementation of the Communications Service in the OMG object management architecture. It provides the means by which OMG compliant objects make requests and receive responses.

object services

Object Services are objects in the OMG object management architecture which provide basic operations for the logical modeling and physical storage of objects.

object type

An object type is a well-defined type that represents a specific set of object interfaces and is satisfied by an object instance whose object implementation encapsulates the behaviour defined by those interfaces. In the OMG model, all objects are strongly typed.

operation

A service that can be requested.

operation signature

The definition of an operation, including the parameters and exceptions which make up that operation. An operation can be characterised by its signature in an object-oriented system.

request

A request is an action by a client to request a service from an object. A request has information associated with it, typically the specification of an operation and zero or more parameters.

server

An entity providing a response to a client request for a service. In an object-oriented system, servers are instances of object implementations activated in computer processes.

service

A computation that may be performed in response to a request from a client entity.
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