Patent Document ID: 9734232
Application ID: 14265050
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A method, comprising: requesting a portion of a meta-model for a hierarchical topology of resources of a networked storage system including a cluster, a virtual server, a storage volume and an aggregate of storage devices, from a computing system of the networked storage system by an application from among a plurality of applications, wherein the requesting specifies the meta-model from among a plurality of meta-models stored within the computing system and a version of the meta-model from among a plurality of versions for a same meta-model stored by the computing system, where the plurality of versions are determined by a property of a plurality of applications; and wherein a navigational application programming interface is used by the application to assemble a path for describing the portion of the meta-model, where the path identifies a root object, a parent object associated with the root object and a child object of the parent object and wherein the parent object, the root object and the child object identify resources of the networked storage system; receiving, from the computing system, the portion of the meta-model; providing the portion of the meta-model to the application from among the plurality of applications; wherein the portion of the meta-model is retrieved by a viewing application programming interface that visualizes meta-model relationships in the portion of the meta-model for the application without interfering with the path assembled by the application using the navigational application programming interface; and wherein different portions of the meta-model are provided to different applications using the navigation application programming interface and the viewing application programming interface; receiving, from the application, a data transaction for one of reading, writing and modifying data stored by the computing system based on the meta-model; and issuing the data transaction.