Patent ID: 7574431

Claim:
A method for collecting and controlling remote data using a Management Information Base (MIB) in a computer device adapted to use Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), the computer device having a processor to communicate with a remote device, the MIB comprising: at least one message construct to communicate with a remote managed device, including a read message construct to read a data element from the remote device, the read message construct having a plurality of entries that define a constrained attribute set for an object in the remote device, wherein the object in the remote device has a device-specific communication protocol, wherein the plurality of entries includes: a user-specified query string mapped to the data element in the constrained attribute set for the object in the remote device, wherein a format of the user-specified message string is sufficiently compatible with the device-specific communication protocol to read the data element of the object in the remote device thereby providing a device protocol compatible message construct; an entry that includes a regular expression to identify the data element within the remote device through matching a data string; a response entry to store the data element such that the at least one data element is available for SNMP messages; a name entry to identify a field read in the remote device as presented to the user; an update interval entry representing a frequency of reading the data element; a last update entry representing a time duration since the last update; a read enable entry to allow definition of fields in the remote device; a retry entry to define a number of times to retry the read message when a response entry is not received; a retry interval entry to define a time interval between read message retries when a response to the read message is not received, and wherein, to manage the constrained attribute set, the MIB communicates with a network manager using SNMP and communicates with the remote device using the device protocol compatible message construct.