Patent ID: 7483959

Claim:
A method for extensible device data gathering in a network having one or more devices and one or more clients, comprising: storing gatherer module set information regarding at least one existing gatherer module, each said existing gatherer module capable of accepting a request to gather data from at least one of said devices and gathering data according to said request; storing a unique identifier for each of the devices in the network in a repository; receiving new gatherer module information regarding a new gatherer module; adding said new gatherer module information to said stored gatherer module set information; receiving a request to gather device data; determining at least one selected gatherer module using the gatherer module set information; requesting said data from the at least one selected gatherer module by calling an interface function of the selected gatherer module with a parameter specifying a class of APIs Application Programming Interface needed to add data to the repository and at least one flag indicating data to be acquired by the selected gatherer module; and receiving said data from said at least one selected gatherer module, wherein the data is received by the selected gatherer module using at least one of the APIs provided to the selected gatherer in the interface function.