Suggested Running Head: Network Management Using XDD Network Management Using XDD

The complexity of computer networks induces perplex management which requires expertise, error-prone configurations and lots of time and expenditure, whence management automation by means of network self-configuration is the answer. A new fundamental network management framework for self-managing systems is proposed and applied to distributed network management. It employs a declarative approach to the construction of network management by means of XML Declarative Description (XDD) and Common Information Model (CIM) – a standard network management model. With the former’s expressiveness and knowledge inference capabilities, it uniformly represents network management facts, axioms, constraints and rules of network management knowledge, while the latter’s interoperation with existing network management standards and protocols provides a framework with the ability to share management information on a multi-platform distributed application environment. An application to self-configuration management is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the framework.