Patent ID: 8099425

Claim:
An apparatus for network management in a heterogeneous environment, comprising: a relational interface embodied in a machine-readable non-transitory medium and when executed by an electronic processor configured to receive a relational query from a software application requesting network management information from a specified network device, the network management information including interface information allowing the software application to monitor, control, and configure devices on a network remotely via the network; a relational mapper embodied in a machine-readable non-transitory medium and configured to translate the relational query requesting network management information received through the relational interface from the software application, to native protocol messages according to an access protocol associated with the network device; a plurality of handlers embodied in a machine-readable non-transitory medium, the plurality of handlers comprising a Hypertext Transfer Protocol handler, a Simple Network Management Protocol handler, and a Telnet handler; and a protocol transaction handler embodied in a machine-readable non-transitory medium and configured to select a handler from the plurality of handlers according to the access protocol associated with the network device, wherein the selected handler is configured to: handle the native protocol messages as a transaction with the network device, return a result of the transaction to the software application; and extract the interface information from the result of the transaction by applying a filter, the filter selected based on the network device and a vendor associated with the network device, the filter compatible with a proprietary data organization associated with the vendor.