The semantics of network management information

Semantics plays an important role in the context of network management, both for clearing out ambiguities and for supporting management decisions. The current behavior-oriented semantic frameworks do not find wide acceptance in this context due to their complexity and lack of support for management applications. We propose a new semantic approach to network management. The semantics is defined by context-specific restrictions representing relationships between situations. By structuring the situation descriptions in a hierarchy, we build up a semantic framework for the network management which corresponds to the object-oriented development style and benefits from features like reusability, abstraction support, and accumulative developments