Resource management sub-system of a telecommunications switching system

Abstract

A telecommunications switching system with a hardware resource manager system. The resource manager interfaces with higher-level system functions such as call processing, OA&M, NMS and system control functions and with lower-level hardware functions embodied in an input/output sub-system (IOSS) containing various hardware resources for interfacing the switching system to other entities. The resource manager controls all interactions between the IOSS hardware and the higher-level functions and hides the hardware specifics of the IOSS, giving the higher-level functions a hardware-independent view of the IOSS resources. As a result, the higher-level functions can operate without modification with a wide variety of IOSS hardware configurations. The resource manager manages the physical interfaces and IOSS resources and is aware of the complete configuration of the IOSS, including all channel addressing information and the state of each IOSS resource. The interfaces between the resource management sub-system and the higher-level functions utilize distributed objects. The resource manager uses the configuration and state information from the IOSS to model each hardware component and communications channel as a managed object, which managed objects are used in the object-oriented interfaces with the higher-level functions of the switching system. Resource characteristics and statuses are available to the higher-level functions as attributes of the resource models. Method calls are provided to manipulate the objects for such operations as loading, testing and controlling the states of the various modeled hardware resources.

What is claimed is:  
     
       1. A resource management system comprising: 
       a first interface, the first interface being adapted to exchange messages with a hardware resource; and  
       a second interface, the second interface including a managed object which models the hardware resource.  
     
     
       2. A system comprising: 
       a controller; and  
       a resource management system comprising:  
       a first interface, the first interface being adapted to exchange messages with a hardware resource; and  
       a second interface, the second interface including a managed object which models the hardware resource,  
       wherein the controller controls the hardware resource by interacting with the resource management system through the second interface.  
     
     
       3. A system comprising: 
       a controller;  
       a first resource management system, the first resource management system including:  
       a first interface, the first interface being adapted to exchange messages with a first hardware resource; and  
       a second interface, the second interface including a first managed object which models the first hardware resource; and  
       a second resource management system, the second resource management system including:  
       a third interface, the third interface adapted to exchange messages with a second hardware resource; and  
       a fourth interface, the fourth interface including a second managed object which models the second hardware resource;  
       wherein, the controller controls the first and second hardware resources by interacting with the first and second resource management systems through the second and fourth interfaces.