Patent ID: 7278143

Claim:
A command line utility embodied in one or more computer-readable storage media, the command line utility comprising: a command schema including one or more commands for engaging, from a management station on a network, an operating system on at least one selected target station accessible over the network enabling at least one of retrieval of management information from and initiation of a management service available through an object model target schema recognized by the at least one selected target station accessible over the network, the command schema comprising: an alias class which defines a command template, each alias of the alias class representing a single command; a verb class, each instance of the verb class representing a behavior available through an alias; a format class, each instance of the format class representing a list of properties that will be returned through processing an alias; and a connection class, each instance of the connection class providing parameters used through an alias when establishing a connection to a target namespace within the target schema; an interactive user interface configured to receive the one or more commands in the command schema from a user of the management station, allowing the user to formulate via the command line utility an instant request for at least one of management information and management services and communicate a response of the at least one selected target station to the user; and an object model command schema to define a mapping between the one or more received commands in the command schema and the object model target schema and interpret the one or more commands from the command schema into a management command operable to cause one of the retrieval of the management information from and the initiation of the management service on the at least one selected target station.