IT Management Using a Heavyweight CIM Ontology

This paper presents an approach for ontology-based IT management based on a heavyweight (formal) ontology using the Web Ontology Language (OWL). The ontology comprises a complete OWL representation of the Common Information Model (CIM) and management rules defined in the Semantic Web Rule Language (SWRL). The ontology not only models the managed system types, but a runtime system dynamically updates model instances in the ontology that reflect values of managed system entities. This allows the evalution of rules that take into account both model and model instances. A reaction module uses the CIM interface of the managed system to invoke CIM methods according to rule evaluation results, thus resulting in automated management. In order to ensure the consistency of the ontology when changes are performed, belief change theory is employed. 1998 ACM Subject Classification C.2.3 Network Operations