Patent ID: 7788362

Claim:
A method to dynamically introduce a new attribute into a policy for a policy-managed system, without requiring a change to a policy manager, comprising: operating at least one sensor coupled to the policy-managed system to dynamically discover a value of at least one existing metric; associating a new attribute with the discovered value of the at least one existing metric; incorporating the new attribute into a policy; storing the policy for future use; and determining if the new attribute is directly measurable by the at least one sensor, and if it is not, determining if a definition of the new attribute currently exists and if it does, determining from the new attribute definition the identity of at least one metric having a metric value required to determine a value of the new attribute, obtaining the metric value of the at least one required metric from a corresponding one of the sensors, and determining the value of the new attribute from the obtained at least one metric value.