BaseWorX platform for building object-oriented management applications

The telecommunication industry has adopted object-oriented technology to represent specifications for a variety of standards, including those addressing inter-operability between network management applications developed in a multi-vendor environment. The CCITT TMN and OMNIPoint specifications include a large set of managed object definitions required by network management applications, and work is in progress to define additional managed objects for specific application domains. The object-oriented technology provides a more natural programming paradigm, and has a potential for higher reuse of software, resulting in a reduction of costs of development, operations, and maintenance of applications. Application development with object-oriented technology can be simplified through a set of development tools and middleware which can automate many of the commonly needed, complex, and error-prone tasks with the development. Automating these tasks allows application developers to concentrate on end-user functionality such as network fault isolation. We discuss AT&T´s Management Application Architecture (MAA) which facilitates inter-operability of management applications, and inter-operability of objects and services within an application. We also discuss the object-oriented technology provided by AT&Ts BaseWorX applications platform which supports the MAA vision, and how the platform simplifies the development of standards-conformant network management applications