To obtain a complete picture one also has to look at object oriented approaches. Standardized object oriented modeling of management information exists at least since the definition of OSI management. An example for a vendor specific object oriented management model is the one used in Cabletron Spectrum [#!specdocs!#]. It was introduced to overcome problems of the Internet Management which lacks a similarly powerful information model.
Newer endeavors led to the aforementioned CIM specified by the DMTF, a federation of many leading companies in the areas of computer systems, software and networks. It is an information modeling and representation schema widely accepted by the industry. The CIM Specification provides a ``Meta Schema'', a specification language called ``Managed Object Format'' (MOF) and mappings to other information models. Details can be found in the CIM Specification 2.2 [#!cim22!#]. CIM further includes a set of pre-defined basic schemas, defining fundamental classes like ``System'' (in the ``Core Schema'') and classes specific to certain areas, like ``Rack'' in the Common Schema ``Physical''. In addition to the definition of an appropriate set of general attributes and an inheritance hierarchy it also allows the modeling of arbitrary dependencies between classes, respectively objects. Thus, CIM provides concepts for descriptions on the abstract modeling level and means to instantiate, represent and exchange environmental models. However, for dependency determination and model generation CIM also needs to be supplemented with further algorithms.