Patent ID: 7340578

Claim:
A method for generating upon request, a report of storage capacity in a data processing system that includes one or more storage resources, the method comprising: (a) providing the data processing system with a resource database for storing information for each storage resource wherein the storage resources are arranged in a hierarchy; (b) collecting storage resource information and capacity information on each storage resource and assigning a unique identifier to each storage resource; (c) entering information collected in step (b) into the resource database; (d) based on the request, marking individual resources for reporting; (e) checking information in the resource database for consistency; (f) generating the report by iterating over all information in the resource database that is marked for reporting and eliminating from the report any duplicate reporting of storage resources by identifying the duplicated storage resources based on the unique identifier assigned to each storage resource; (g) checking the resource database to determine whether a hierarchy level that is referred to by another hierarchy level exists in the resource database; and (h) generating an error when a hierarchy level that is referred to by another hierarchy level does not exist in the resource database.