Patent ID: 7698543

Claim:
A method for specifying configuration information of computing devices to be monitored, the method comprising: creating a hierarchical structure specifying configuration information by: displaying to a user an indication of a hierarchical structure that includes a root node; in response to receiving from the user an indication to add a group as a child of the root node, adding a group node as a child of the root node, each group node for identifying a hierarchical organization of data sources, configuration settings, and rules for the configuration settings, and displaying to the user an indication of the hierarchical structure that includes the root node and the group node; in response to receiving from the user an indication to add a data source as a child of a group, adding a data source node as a child of the group node, the data source node identifying a data source of configuration settings, and displaying to the user an indication of the hierarchical structure that includes the root node, the group node, and the data source node; in response to receiving from the user an indication to add a setting as a child of a data source, adding a setting node as a child of the data source node, the setting node identifying a configuration setting within the data source identified by the data source node, and displaying to the user an indication of the hierarchical structure that includes the root node, the group node, the data source node, and the setting node; and in response to receiving from the user an indication to add a rule as a child of a setting, adding a rule node as a child of the setting node, the rule node identifying a rule indicating when the configuration setting identified by the setting node is in compliance, and displaying to the user an indication of the hierarchical structure that includes the root node, the group node, the data source node, the setting node, and the rule node so that the user can organize rules of configuration settings into groups and data sources within groups, and wherein a rule is active or passive and wherein an active rule evaluates to a Boolean value indicating whether a configuration setting is in compliance and a passive rule specifies how to create values that are used by an active rule; and creating a desired configuration monitor document containing the created hierarchical structure specifying the configuration information; distributing to computing devices to be monitored a package that includes a client component and the desired configuration monitor document, the client component including a comparison engine and a collection engine so that the computing devices execute the comparison engine to identify configuration settings that are not in compliance as specified by the hierarchical structure of the desired configuration monitor document and execute the collection engine to upload results of the comparison engine to a monitoring server.