Identifying network management policies

An article comprising:

• a storage medium having a plurality of machine readable instructions, wherein execution of the instructions causes a machine to perform operations comprising:
• search an entry associated with a network component in an aggregated data set to identify one or more pointers to a deployment policy tree and a pointer to a configuration tree, the deployment policy tree hierarchically associating policies with a plurality of network components including the network component, the configuration tree hierarchically defining a plurality of deployed network components including the network components;
• based on the identified one or more pointers to the deployment policy tree, search the deployment policy tree to identify one or more policies directly associated with the network component and to identify one or more policies directly associated with the group;
• and
• based on the identified pointer to the network configuration tree, search the configuration tree to identify a parent node corresponding to a group to which the network component belongs to generate a list of one or more groups to which the network component belongs.

A policy based network management (PBNM) system comprising:

• a network configuration tree configured to store a hierarchical tree representation of a network configuration, the tree representation being formed of a plurality of nodes, each node corresponding to a network component;
• a deployed policy tree configured to store a hierarchical tree representation of policies associated with network components;
• an aggregated data set configured to store a plurality of data elements including one or more identity elements, one or more pointers to the deployed policy tree, and one or more pointers to the network configuration tree, each identity element identifying a network component and having an associated network configuration tree pointer and one or more associated deployed policy tree pointers;
• and
• one or more software components configured to identify one or more policies associated with a network component;
• generate a list of one or more groups to which the network component belongs;
• and identify one or more policies associated with each of the groups in the generated list.

A method comprising providing a capability to perform operations on a computer system, the operations comprising:

• receiving a request to identify one or more policies associated with a specified subject;
• identifying one or more policies directly associated with the specified subject by:
• searching an entry associated with the specified subject in an aggregated data set to identify one or more first pointers to a deployment policy tree, the deployment policy tree hierarchically associating policies with a plurality of network components including the network component;
• and
• based on the identified one or more first deployment policy tree pointers, searching the deployment policy tree to identify one or more policies directly associated with the specified subject;
• generating a list of one or more groups to which the specified subject belongs by:
• searching an entry associated with the specified subject in the aggregated data set to identify a pointer to a configuration tree, the configuration tree hierarchically defining a plurality of deployed network components including the network components;
• and
• based on the identified configuration tree pointer, searching the configuration tree to identify a parent node corresponding to a group to which the specified subject belongs;
• and
• identifying one or more policies associated with each of the groups in the generated list by:
• searching an entry associated with the group in the aggregated data set to identify one or more second pointers to a deployment policy tree;
• and
• based on the identified one or more second deployment policy tree pointers, searching the deployment policy tree to identify one or more policies directly associated with the group.