Patent ID: 7580938

Claim:
A method comprising: receiving selection criteria in response to issuance of a command to expand a resource instance in a hierarchical tree of storage area network resources, the selection criteria indicating identities of multiple managed objects that store information associated with sub-resources in the hierarchical tree beneath the resource instance being expanded; identifying a resource type associated with the sub-resources beneath the resource instance being expanded; mapping the identified resource type to attribute information indicating attributes of object data in the multiple managed objects; accessing portions of the multiple managed objects as specified by the attributes to expand the resource instance in the respective hierarchical tree to include a representation of the sub-resources; maintaining each of the multiple managed objects to include configuration information associated with the sub-resources as well as display information associated with the sub-resources for creating an expanded version of the hierarchical tree; identifying relevant portions of the multiple managed objects to be retrieved based on the attribute information, the relevant portions indicating the display information associated with the sub-resources as opposed to the configuration information associated with the sub-resources; and initialing expansion of the hierarchical tree based on retrieving the relevant portions of the multiple managed objects in lieu of retrieving the configuration information associated with each of the multiple managed objects.