Patent ID: 8898269

Claim:
A method for managing network management data, the method comprising: determining that a first version of a set of network management data and a second version of the set of network management data have been created, the first and second versions of the set of network management data each being associated with a plurality of managed entities in a network and comprising at least an identifier of each of the plurality of managed entities; determining that the identifier of at least one of the plurality of managed entities in the first version of the set of network management data fails to match any of the identifiers in the second version of the set of network management data; creating, based on the determining the identifier of at least one of the plurality of managed entities in the first version of the set of network management data fails to match any of the identifiers in the second version of the set of network management data, a first network graph based on the first version of the set of network management data, the first network graph comprising a first set of entities in the plurality of managed entities; creating, based on the determining the identifier of at least one of the plurality of managed entities in the first version of the set of network management data fails to match any of the identifiers in the second version of the set of network management data, a second network graph based on the second version of the set of network management data, the second network graph comprising a second set of entities in the plurality of managed entities; assigning a similarity metric between at least one or more entities in the first set of entities and one or more entities in the second set of entities; and determining that at least a first entity in the first set of entities and at least a second entity in the second set of entities are identical entities based on the similarity metric assigned between the first entity and the second entity being one of equal to and above a first given threshold.