Patent ID: 8700561

Claim:
A method, comprising: receiving a request from a user for an inventory of objects in a specified data storage location of a network environment; requesting the inventory of objects; receiving first sets of metadata elements, each set of metadata elements representing one object in the inventory of objects; generating a first summary of the inventory of objects, wherein the first summary includes a total count of the inventory of objects, the total count corresponding to a plurality of dimension groups, the dimension groups corresponding to respective dimensions that represent respective types of metadata, wherein the dimensions are in a hierarchical arrangement, and wherein each metadata element of each first set corresponds to one of the dimension groups; presenting, on a display screen of a computer, an inventory view of the inventory of objects, the inventory view including the first summary of the inventory of objects; receiving a request from the user to manipulate the inventory view to subdivide the total count into two or more counts, each count based on a different one of a plurality of metadata elements of a first user selected dimension group; responsive to the request to manipulate the inventory view, generating the two or more counts corresponding respectively to two or more subsets of the inventory of objects, wherein each subset is defined by a hierarchical path in the hierarchical arrangement of dimensions, and wherein each subset includes objects associated with a single metadata element of the plurality of metadata elements of the first user selected dimension group; presenting, on the display screen, a manipulated inventory view including the two or more counts and the hierarchical path for each corresponding subset; receiving a request from a user to perform a protection task on objects of a selected subset of the two or more of subsets; and initiating the protection task, wherein the protection task includes one of a remediation task to remediate each one of the objects of the selected subset and a registration task to register each one of the objects of the selected subset.