Patent ID: 8380757

Claim:
A method for providing a consolidated logical view of a system comprising: providing a plurality of database tables associated with a plurality of processing nodes of a data storage system, wherein said plurality of database tables provides a plurality of individual views of the data storage system, each of said plurality of individual views representing a view of the data storage system for a different one of said plurality of processing nodes; receiving notification regarding a modification to one or more of said plurality of database tables, said notification identifying an operation performed causing the modification and providing data associated with the modification; and modifying a merge database table providing a consolidated view of said plurality of individual views, wherein said modifying is performed in accordance with said notification and a configuration file including logic describing processing performed to merge said plurality of individual views, wherein a first of the plurality of database tables associated with a first of the plurality of individual views is a first device table and a second of the plurality of data tables associated with a second of the plurality of individual views is a second device table, said first device table identifying at least one device that is not included in the second device table whereby said first device table includes a row for said at least one device and said second device table does not include a row for said at least one device, and wherein said configuration file includes at least one rule indicating to resolve a conflict in connection with merging the first and the second devices tables by taking a set union of devices in the first and the second device tables.