Patent ID: 7337179

Claim:
A method of organizing information about a system, wherein the system includes a plurality of resources configured to form the system and groups of the resources have hierarchical contextual relationships that are logically distinct from a physical configuration relationship, the method of organizing information about the system comprising: (a) identifying at least one of the resources having a contextual relationship with at least one other of the resources to create first context information about such identified first group of resources, wherein (i) the first context information includes information representing a grouping of the first group of resources, (ii) the contextual relationship of the resources in the first group of resources comprises a hierarchical contextual relationship that is logically distinct from a physical configuration relationship and is also independent of configuration modeling structural constraints, and (iii) at least one of the resources in the first group of resources is utilized by another resource in the first group of resources; and (b) identifying at least one of the resources having a contextual relationship with at least one other of the resources to create second context information about such second group of identified resources, wherein (i) the second context information includes information representing a grouping of the second group of resources, (ii) the resources identified in (a) contain at least one resource not identified in (b) and the first context information includes the second context information, (iii) the contextual relationship of the resources in the second group of resources comprises a hierarchical contextual relationship that is logically distinct from a physical configuration relationship and is also independent of configuration modeling structural constraints, and (iv) at least one of the resources in the second group of resources is utilized by another resource in the second group of resources; wherein the first context information and the second context information are useful in conjunction with configuration technology to organize and maintain resource data.