Patent ID: 7512966

Claim:
A method, in a data processing system, for visually rendering a representation of a system resource, comprising: collecting performance data for one or more policies associated with resources, wherein the performance data is collected from a performance data storage device associated with a policy evaluation engine, wherein the performance data includes one or more of a number of times each of the one or more policies was evaluated for the system resource, timestamp information regarding when each of the one or more policies was evaluated, a number of times each of the one or more policies was evaluated positively, a number of times each of the one or more policies was evaluated negatively, and a number of times each of the one or more policies was evaluated for each decision point of the system resource; collecting weighting value information for the each of the one or more policies; identifying a next resource for generation of a graphical element, wherein the graphical element is one of a geometric shape, a bar in a bar-chart, a line in a line-graph, a portion of a pie-chart, and an element in a block diagram; determining a size characteristic of the graphical element representing the system resource based on one or more relative weighting values corresponding to one or more policies associated with the system resource; determining an emphasis characteristic of the graphical element based on performance data corresponding to the one or more policies associated with the system resource; and generating a visual representation of the system resource using the graphical element having the size characteristic and the emphasis characteristic, wherein the emphasis characteristic is at least one of a color of the graphical element and a visual effect to be applied to the graphical element.