Patent ID: 7603443

Claim:
A method of provisioning resources in a data processing system, comprising the steps, for each of a plurality of said resources, of: receiving information regarding one of said resources to be provisioned, said information comprising at least a resource identifier that is a standard descriptor for the one of said resources, a type code that categorizes the one of said resources as a specific type of resource, a parameter name for at least one configuration parameter, a parameter default value for the at least one configuration parameter, an override indicator for said parameter default value specifying whether one can override said parameter default value, cannot override said parameter default value, or must override said parameter default value, and a manual intervention indicator where manual intervention is required during provisioning process, with a field containing intervention instructions when manual intervention is required; formatting said information into a standard format to form a configuration profile template for a type of resource corresponding to the one of said resources, and wherein resources are grouped by resource types; storing said configuration profile template in a location that is available to a provisioning application, wherein a plurality of configuration profile templates are created for a plurality of types of resources, and wherein said plurality of configuration profile templates serve as master templates for said plurality of types of resources; receiving a provisioning request for the one of said resources from a customer, wherein said provisioning request includes parameter values specified by said customer for installing a current instance of the one of said resources; retrieving said configuration profile template corresponding to said type code of the one of said resources and a previously saved configuration profile corresponding to a previous installation of the one of said resources and said customer; and dynamically combining data from each of said provisioning request, said configuration profile template, and said previously saved configuration profile to form a new configuration profile for said current instance of the one of said resources, wherein said new configuration profile is formed by copying said configuration profile template to retrieve said parameter default value for the at least one configuration parameter corresponding said type code of the one of said resources and inserting said parameter values from said provisioning request into said new configuration profile and inserting additional parameter values from said previously saved configuration profile into said new configuration profile.