Patent ID: 7613720

Claim:
A method, comprising: maintaining a discovery database including information on at least one network, and, for each network, information on entities in the network and a status of the entities; generating a user interface display indicating the entities in one network that are available and unavailable; receiving user selection of at least one entity in the network that is displayed as unavailable, wherein at least one displayed unavailable entity is not selected; receiving user selection to remove the selected at least one entity; determining whether the selected at least one entity that was displayed as unavailable when selected to remove has changed from an unavailable state to an available state in response to receiving user selection to remove the selected at least one unavailable entity; removing from the discovery database information on the selected at least one entity and any underlying entities within the selected entity in response to the user selection to remove the selected at least one entity and in response to determining that the at least one selected entity has not changed to the available state, wherein the information is removed by: issuing a precommit transaction to delete the selected unavailable entity and all underlying entities within the selected entity from the discovery database; determining whether the selected entity and underlying entities have changed from an unavailable state to an available state in response to the precommit transaction; and issuing a commit transaction to commit the delete of the selected entity and the underlying entities in response to determining that the selected entity and underlying entities remain in the unavailable state; issuing an abort transaction to reverse the precommit transaction and the remove operation for the at least one selected entity in response to determining that the at least one selected entity has changed from the unavailable state to the available state.