Persistenzspezifizierungssystem und Verfahren für Hochleistungssubkarten auf Anfrage

Discovery/layout software (101) configures a general purpose computer system to act as a management station (100) using an industry standard SNMP protocol. The discovery/layout software (101) has a discovery mechanism (302) and a layout mechanism (304) which, in combination, permit the discovery/layout software (101) to provide various submaps (202-210) to a display (108) for illustrating network topology, which includes devices and device interconnections of the network (118). The submaps (202-210) correspond to various hierarchical views of the network (118). Significantly, a persistence specification mechanism (103) is provided in the discovery/layout software (101) for specifying a submap as either transient (generated upon demand) or persistent (exists whether demanded or not). An integrating application (332) as well as the user can identify a submap as persistent. This feature enables better interfacing of the integrating application (332) with the station (100), thereby providing more information to the user. This feature further minimizes memory requirements as well as requisite processing time due to the elimination of unnecessary submaps and the elimination of processing of topology changes relative to the unnecessary submaps.