Patent ID: 7454487

Claim:
A method for defining a manageable entity of a storage area network for use in management of the manageable entity, comprising: obtaining a set of attribute values related to the manageable entity in the storage area network; identifying corresponding entity categories within a storage area network entity model that contain attribute definitions that correspond to respective attribute values in the set of attribute values; assigning the respective attribute values in the set of attribute values to the corresponding respective attribute definitions contained within the identified corresponding entity categories; determining if there is at least one unassigned attribute value in the set of attribute values related to the manageable entity, and if so: defining at least one new entity category containing at least one new attribute definition that corresponds to the at least one unassigned attribute value; assigning the at least one unassigned attribute value to a corresponding one of the at least one new attribute definition contained in the at least one new entity category; and repeating the identifying and assigning in an iterative manner for entity categories at successive levels of the entity model.