Patent ID: 7490066

Claim:
A method for monitoring services on a network with at least one service on the network, executed in a data processing system, comprising the steps of: at a monitoring server, spawning a first process in said server, wherein said first process spawns at least one second process to monitor services on said network and wherein each said second process is associated with at least one service on the network; at the server, transmitting a query to an engine by the first process, said query includes a request for the number of services to monitor on said network; in response to the engine receiving the query from the first process, sending at least the number of services to monitor from the engine to the first process; spawning a second process for each service to monitor on said network by the first process and wherein each spawned second process requires additional information about the associated service said second spawned process will monitor; each spawned second process querying an engine for addtional information regarding the associated service to monitor, wherein said query includes a request for location identification information: monitoring a service with a spawned second process by receiving information by the spawned second process from the associated monitored service; detecting a change with the associated service by the spawned second process; and delivering a message from the spawned second process to an accounting server when a change is detected with the associated monitored service.