Patent ID: 7765287

Claim:
A platform management method for handling providers comprising: receiving, by a provider subsystem, a request to invoke a provider on a server, wherein the provider is a dynamic linked list or an executable that renders a layer of abstraction between a managed object and the provider subsystem and the provider is used to surface instrumented data and events for a particular managed entity on a system requested by a calling device, wherein the particular managed entity is compiled to a specific platform architecture; receiving a first indicator specifying a 32-bit or 64-bit version of the provider that the calling device desires to invoke; receiving a second indicator comprising a state identifying whether a version specified by the first indicator is required, wherein when the state is a first state, the version specified by the first indicator is required, and when the state is a second state, the version specified by the first indicator is not required; inspecting the first indicator and the second indicator to determine the version of the provider to load in response to the request; observing a bitness of a calling application on the calling device; and loading a particular provider instantiation corresponding to the version as specified by the first indicator and the second indicator, enabling the calling device to manage and to control the particular managed entity, wherein when the first indicator specifies the version having a different bitness from the calling application on the calling device and the second indicator identifies the version specified by the first indicator is required, then the particular provider instantiation that is loaded corresponds to a bitness of the version specified by the first indicator.