Patent ID: 7100149

Claim:
A method of interfacing with managed objects in a communication network, the method comprising: receiving, at a network element, an application-independent request for service, wherein the request includes generic operations and data in a generic format, wherein the generic data format is an open-ended name-value pair format, such that the generically represented data includes a subset of the name-value pairs supported by different service applications in the communications network so that the request may be used across the different services in the network; mapping the request to a registry to identify, from a plurality of service applications at the network element, a service application that can process the request; executing the identified service application based upon the request, wherein a plurality of client applications use the generic data format to transmit application-independent requests for service in the communication network, wherein the request is mapped to the registry by a managed object manager, and wherein the managed object manager and the registry together manage a generic interface.