Patent ID: 7496594

Claim:
A computer-implemented method comprising: maintaining, with a mainframe computer system, one or more data structures to store configuration data of the mainframe computer system having a plurality of partitions, wherein each partition comprises a logical grouping of one or more of a plurality of hardware components, and wherein the hardware components include channels, subsystems, control units, and input-output (I/O) hardware components; and presenting, with the mainframe computer system, a user interface to graphically display the configuration data in a hierarchical tree-like structure in a single window, wherein the hierarchical tree-like structure is graphically displayed to include a plurality of nodes, wherein the plurality of nodes comprise: a first set of the plurality of nodes that each corresponds to a different one of the plurality of partitions; a second set of the plurality of nodes visually represented in child relationships with one or more of the first set of nodes, each of the second set of nodes corresponding to one of the I/O hardware components; a third set of the plurality of nodes visually represented in child relationships with one or more of the second set of nodes, each of the third set of nodes corresponds to one of the channels; a fourth set of the plurality nodes visually represented in child relationships with one or more of the third set of nodes, each of the fourth set of nodes corresponds to one of the subsystems; and a fifth set of the plurality nodes visually represented in child relationships with one or more of the fifth set of nodes, each of the fifth set of nodes corresponding to one of the control units, wherein one or more of the subsystem nodes are symbolic hardware components that each represents at least one upward connection from one or more the channels to one or more of the control units, wherein the configuration data for a same individual subsystem includes a man of the upward connections represented by the subsystem from the one or more channels to the one or more control units, and wherein at least two different ones of the fourth set of subsystem nodes each graphically represent and provide access to the entire configuration data for the same individual subsystem.