Automatic selection of an update strategy for management data

Systems management operations are based on data that is distributed throughout the network. Monitoring this information requires network messages and can increase network traffic significantly. Selecting the right update strategy for such continuous management activities reduces the network load. Automatic selection of an update strategy is based on two factors: the access behavior of the managing applications and the change behavior of the data. In addition, management applications may have special requirements on the actuality of the data. We show how an optimal update strategy can be selected regarding access rate, change rate and the requirements of the application. In this way the task of selecting the right strategy and updating the management data can be separated from the logic of the management task itself. We describe an implementation and the use in a network service trading system