WO2020062097A1

WO2020062097A1 - Managed object instance identification for object management

Info

Publication number: WO2020062097A1
Application number: PCT/CN2018/108483
Authority: WO
Inventors: Jing PING; Anatoly ANDRIANOV; Olaf Pollakowski
Original assignee: Nokia Shanghai Bell Co., Ltd.; Nokia Solutions And Networks Oy; Nokia Technologies Oy
Priority date: 2018-09-28
Filing date: 2018-09-28
Publication date: 2020-04-02
Also published as: EP3857357A4; CN112805679A; EP3857357A1; CN112805679B

Abstract

A method of object management comprises assigning attribute information to a managed object instance (MOI) (210), the attribute information at least comprising unchangeable identification information uniquely and persistently identifying the MOI, and changeable parenting information indicating a number of parent MOIs containing the MOI in a hierarchy, the number being zero, one, or greater than one; and in response to detecting a change in the parent MOIs (220), updating the attribute information by changing the parenting information without changing the identification information (230). In this way, the identification information is kept persistent for a MOI and the parenting information is changeable to reflect the real time parenting relationship between the MOIs correctly and dynamically, which thereby simplifies management object management and saves resource in the network management system.

Description

MANAGED OBJECT INSTANCE IDENTIFICATION FOR OBJECT MANAGEMENT

FIELD

Embodiments of the present disclosure generally relate to the field of telecommunication and in particular, to managed object instance identification for object management.

BACKGROUND

Communication technologies are continuously developed. Currently, a next generation (NG) of technology, i.e. the fifth generation (5G) , is proposed. 5G is mostly built on a new radio (NR) , but the 5G (or NG) network can also build on E-UTRA radio. It is estimated that NR will provide bitrates on the order of 10-20 Gbit/sor higher and will support at least enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) and ultra-reliable low-latency-communication (URLLC) as well as massive machine type communication (mMTC) . NR is expected to deliver extreme broadband and ultra-robust, low latency connectivity and massive networking to support the Internet of Things (IoT) .

In order to maintain operation efficiency, reliability, and safety, it is necessary to have network management. For example, the study of the Third Generation Partnership Project Services and System Aspects Work Group 5 (3GPP SA5) focuses on management and orchestration of communication networks and network resource models.

SUMMARY

In general, example embodiments of the present disclosure provide a solution for managed object instance identification.

In a first aspect, there is provided a method of object management. The method comprises assigning attribute information to a managed object instance, the attribute information at least comprising unchangeable identification information uniquely and persistently identifying the managed object instance, and changeable parenting information indicating a number of parent managed object instances containing the managed object instance in a hierarchy, the number being zero, one, or greater than one and in response to detecting a change in the parent managed object instances, updating the attribute information by changing the parenting information without changing the identification information.

In a second aspect, there is provided an apparatus for object management. The apparatus comprises at least one processor; and at least one memory including computer program codes; the at least one memory and the computer program codes are configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the apparatus at least to: assign attribute information to a managed object instance, the attribute information at least comprising unchangeable identification information uniquely and persistently identifying the managed object instance, and changeable parenting information indicating a number of parent managed object instances containing the managed object instance in a hierarchy, the number being zero, one, or greater than one; and in response to detecting a change in the parent managed object instances, update the attribute information by changing the parenting information without changing the identification information.

In a third aspect, there is provided an apparatus for object management. The apparatus comprises means for assigning attribute information to a managed object instance, the attribute information at least comprising unchangeable identification information uniquely and persistently identifying the managed object instance, and changeable parenting information indicating a number of parent managed object instances containing the managed object instance in a hierarchy, the number being zero, one, or greater than one; and means for updating, in response to detecting a change in the parent managed object instances, the attribute information by changing the parenting information without changing the identification information.

In a fourth aspect, there is provided a non-transitory computer readable medium comprising program instructions for causing an apparatus to perform at least the following: assigning attribute information to a managed object instance, the attribute information at least comprising unchangeable identification information uniquely and persistently identifying the managed object instance, and changeable parenting information indicating a number of parent managed object instances containing the managed object instance in a hierarchy, the number being zero, one, or greater than one; and updating, in response to detecting a change in the parent managed object instances, the attribute information by changing the parenting information without changing the identification information.

It is to be understood that the summary section is not intended to identify key or essential features of embodiments of the present disclosure, nor is it intended to be used to limit the scope of the present disclosure. Other features of the present disclosure will become easily comprehensible through the following description.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Some example embodiments will now be described with reference to the accompanying drawings, where:

Fig. 1 illustrates an example network management system in which embodiments of the present disclosure may be implemented;

Fig. 2 illustrates a flowchart of a process of object management according to some embodiments of the present disclosure;

Fig. 3 illustrates a flowchart of a process of identification information update for a MOI according to some other embodiments of the present disclosure;

Figs. 4A-4C illustrate schematic diagrams showing changes of the hierarchy of MOIs according to some embodiments of the present disclosure; and

Fig. 5 illustrates a simplified block diagram of a device that is suitable for implementing embodiments of the present disclosure.

Throughout the drawings, the same or similar reference numerals represent the same or similar element.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Principle of the present disclosure will now be described with reference to some example embodiments. It is to be understood that these embodiments are described only for the purpose of illustration and help those skilled in the art to understand and implement the present disclosure, without suggesting any limitation as to the scope of the disclosure. The disclosure described herein can be implemented in various manners other than the ones described below.

In the following description and claims, unless defined otherwise, all technical and scientific terms used herein have the same meaning as commonly understood by one of ordinary skills in the art to which this disclosure belongs.

References in the present disclosure to “one embodiment, ” “an embodiment, ” “an example embodiment, ” and the like indicate that the embodiment described may include a particular feature, structure, or characteristic, but it is not necessary that every embodiment includes the particular feature, structure, or characteristic. Moreover, such phrases are not necessarily referring to the same embodiment. Further, when a particular feature, structure, or characteristic is described in connection with an embodiment, it is submitted that it is within the knowledge of one skilled in the art to affect such feature, structure, or characteristic in connection with other embodiments whether or not explicitly described.

It shall be understood that although the terms “first” and “second” etc. may be used herein to describe various elements, these elements should not be limited by these terms. These terms are only used to distinguish one element from another. For example, a first element could be termed a second element, and similarly, a second element could be termed a first element, without departing from the scope of example embodiments. As used herein, the term “and/or” includes any and all combinations of one or more of the listed terms.

The terminology used herein is for the purpose of describing particular embodiments only and is not intended to be limiting of example embodiments. As used herein, the singular forms “a” , “an” and “the” are intended to include the plural forms as well, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise. It will be further understood that the terms “comprises” , “comprising” , “has” , “having” , “includes” and/or “including” , when used herein, specify the presence of stated features, elements, and/or components etc., but do not preclude the presence or addition of one or more other features, elements, components and/or combinations thereof.

As used in this application, the term “circuitry” may refer to one or more or all of the following:

(a) hardware-only circuit implementations (such as implementations in only analog and/or digital circuitry) and

(b) combinations of hardware circuits and software, such as (as applicable) :

(i) a combination of analog and/or digital hardware circuit (s) with software/firmware and

(ii) any portions of hardware processor (s) with software (including digital signal processor (s) ) , software, and memory (ies) that work together to cause an apparatus, such as a mobile phone or server, to perform various functions) and

(c) hardware circuit (s) and or processor (s) , such as a microprocessor (s) or a portion of a microprocessor (s) , that requires software (e.g., firmware) for operation, but the software may not be present when it is not needed for operation.

This definition of circuitry applies to all uses of this term in this application, including in any claims. As a further example, as used in this application, the term circuitry also covers an implementation of merely a hardware circuit or processor (or multiple processors) or portion of a hardware circuit or processor and its (or their) accompanying software and/or firmware. The term circuitry also covers, for example and if applicable to the particular claim element, a baseband integrated circuit or processor integrated circuit for a mobile device or a similar integrated circuit in server, a cellular network device, or other computing or network device.

As used herein, the term “wireless communication network” refers to a network following any suitable wireless communication standards, such as New Radio (NR) , Long Term Evolution (LTE) , LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) , Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) , High-Speed Packet Access (HSPA) , and so on. The “wireless communication network” may also be referred to as a “wireless communication system. ” Furthermore, communications between network devices, between a network device and a terminal device, or between terminal devices in the wireless communication network may be performed according to any suitable communication protocol, including, but not limited to, Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) , Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) , Long Term Evolution (LTE) , New Radio (NR) , European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) , wireless local area network (WLAN) standards, such as the IEEE 802.11 standards, and/or any other appropriate wireless communication standard either currently known or to be developed in the future.

As used herein, the term “network device” refers to a node in a communication network via which a terminal device accesses the network and receives services therefrom. The network device may also refer to a network device, an access network node, a base station (BS) , or an access point (AP) , for example, a node B (NodeB or NB) , an evolved NodeB (eNodeB or eNB) , a Home Node B, a Home eNode B, a NR NB (also referred to as a gNB) , a Remote Radio Unit (RRU) , a radio header (RH) , a remote radio head (RRH) , a relay, a low power node such as a femto, a pico, and so forth, depending on the applied terminology and technology.

The term “terminal device” refers to any end device that may be capable of wireless communication. By way of example rather than limitation, a terminal device may also be referred to as a communication device, user equipment (UE) , a Subscriber Station (SS) , a Portable Subscriber Station, a Mobile Station (MS) , or an Access Terminal (AT) . The terminal device may include, but not limited to, a mobile phone, a cellular phone, a smart phone, voice over IP (VoIP) phones, wireless local loop phones, a tablet, a wearable terminal device, a personal digital assistant (PDA) , portable computers, desktop computer, image capture terminal devices such as digital cameras, gaming terminal devices, music storage and playback appliances, vehicle-mounted wireless terminal devices, wireless endpoints, mobile stations, laptop-embedded equipment (LEE) , laptop-mounted equipment (LME) , USB dongles, smart devices, wireless customer-premises equipment (CPE) , an Internet of Things (loT) device, a watch or other wearable, a head-mounted display (HMD) , a vehicle, a drone, a medical device and applications (e.g., remote surgery) , an industrial device and applications (e.g., a robot and/or other wireless devices operating in an industrial and/or an automated processing chain contexts) , a consumer electronics device, a device operating on commercial and/or industrial wireless networks, and the like.

Fig. 1 illustrates an example network management system 100 in which embodiments of the present disclosure may be implemented. The network management system 100 may be considered as a management layer over the communication networks. In some examples, the network management system 100 may be implemented as the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) management or European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) MANO network orchestration (MANO) and network resource model (NRM) system. It is noted that the term network resource model (NRM) relates to 3GPP, while ETSI NFV may use the terms “information model” and “data model, ” which are similar concepts to NRM.

The system 100 includes a network management entity 110 for managing managed object instances (MOIs) . The network management entity 110 may also be referred to as a network management function, element, device, apparatus, and the like. In general, the network management entity 110 may include the following features: creation and deletion of MOIs, retrieval and browsing of attributes, communication of actions, notification of access to MOIs, identification of a MOI hierarchy, notification of change to MOIs, multi-thread safe access to MOIs, and architectural neutrality.

As used herein, a MOI is a logical representation of a virtual or physical network functions in a communication network. At the network management layer, information object classes (IOCs) may be defined, for example, with a Network Resource Model (NRM) . The relationships between IOCs (including inheritance and name containment) and their attributes may also be defined. A MOI may be considered as an instance of the IOC and may sometimes be referred to as a managed object (MO) for short. The network management entity 110 manages a set of MOIs that are instantiated from the IOCs defined in the NRM. A MOI may be corresponding to at least one of, for example, a Managed Function (MF) such as a 3GPP MF, a Managed Element (ME) such as a 3GPP ME, a sub-network of a communication network such as a 3GPP Sub-network, a Network Slice such as a 3GPP network slice, a Network Slice Subnet (NSS) , and the like.

The network function represented by a MOI may include any physical or virtual network element, entity, unit, and the like. In some networks, the functionality of a network node (such as a gNB in NR networks) is split into different parts. For example, the functionality of the base station may be split in 2-way as a Centralized Unit (CU) and Distributed Unit (DU) or may be split in 3-way as a DU, a CU-Control Plane (CU-CP) , and a CU-User Plane (CU-UP) . The CU, DU, CU-CP, and CU-UP are also network functions. In some embodiments, the network functions may also include a Network Functions Virtualisation (NFV) Network Service (NS) such as an ETSI NFV NS, an NFV Virtualised Network Function (VNF) such as an ETSI NFV VNF, an NFV VNF Component (VNFC) such as an ETSI VNFC. It would be appreciated that only some examples of the network functions are listed above. Other MOIs corresponding to any other network functions may also be managed by the network management entity 110.

In network management, MOIs in a communication network may be organized hierarchically. Some MOIs are contained by other MOIs and thus are considered as child MOIs (or leaf MOIs) of the other MOIs. The network function represented by a child MOI may be a subset of the network function represented by its parent MOI in the network structure or is managed or controlled by the network function corresponding to the parent MOI. For example, if a first MOI is a NodeB Managed Function instance (MFI) and a second MOI is a Radio Network Controller (RNC) MFI, then the first MOI is considered as being contained by the second MOI and is organized as a parent of the second MOI in the hierarchy. Such hierarchy is also referred to as a containment hierarchy.

Fig. 1 shows a hierarchy 120 of MOIs 121 to 126. The connection line between two MOIs indicates that a parent MOI of the two MOIs contains a child MOI of the two MOIs. For example, the root MOI 121 contains the

MOIs

122 and 123, where the MOI 121 is a parent MOI and the

MOIs

122 and 123 are child MOIs to the MOI 121. The MOI 122 contains the MOI 124 and thus is a parent MOI of the MOI 124. The MOI 124 is contained by two

parent MOIs

122 and 123. The containment relationship of other MOIs can also be derived from the hierarchy 120. It is to be understood that the number of MOIs is only for the purpose of illustration without suggesting any limitations. Those MOIs may be corresponding to any network functions to be managed by the network management entity 110.

To manage the MOIs, one of the important things is to identify the MOIs. There are several types of identifiers in communication networks to identify network functions. Some examples include for 5G network and network functions in 3GPP, which including a Distinguished Name (DN) used to identify a Managed Object Instance (MOI) within a name space for a name containment hierarchy in a 3GPP management system; a Resource URI used to identify a resource (for Representational State Transfer (RESTful) Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) -based management protocol solution sets) of a MOI in the 3GPP management system, which comprises DN and other URI components; a Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) used to identify a Network Function (NF) Instance for NF service registration and discovery (via signalling protocols defined in 3GPP SA2) in 3GPP Network Registration Function (NRF) defined in 3GPP TSs 23.501 and 23.502; a Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) used to identify a service access point for NF services provided by NFs, such as an NRF, Network Slice Subnet Function (NSSF) , Access and Mobility Management function (AMF) , Managed Function (MF) in operation Administration and Maintenance (OAM) , and the like. Other integer or string based identifiers are also used in the communication systems, such as Cell Id, Tracking Area Code (TAC) Id, AMF Id, and the like.

In current network management networks, the above two DN-based identifiers (i.e., DN and Resource URI) are used in 3GPP management system (defined in 3GPP SA5) to identify MOIs. DN is built from a series of “name components, ” referred to as Relative Distinguished Names (RDNs) . The absolute DN of a MOI comprises RDN of its leaf MOI and DN of its parent MOI. The concept of DN exists in 3GPP management specifications since 3GPP Rel-4 (early 2001) and is fully specified in the 3GPP TS 32.300.

The advantage of using DN as an identifier of a MOI is that the absolute DN is unique and from DN of a MOI, it is possible to derive the DN of its containing MOI (i.e., the parent MOI) , if any. However, as DN reflects the name containment hierarchy, it cannot be persistent during change of the network and network functions (for example, re-parenting caused by cell-rehoming, network slice sub-network update, and the like. ) , which may cause various problems in the network management including the unreliability of association between the performance, fault and security related data with the MOIs based on DNs. The restrictions of the DN-based identification mechanism imply serious problems because the DN of a MOI is tightly coupled with the parent MO (s) . The problems may occur in various cases, some of which are discussed below as examples.

In a first case, when a parent MOI of a MOI is changed (for example, an original parent MOI is deleted or changed to a new parent MOI) , the original DN of the MOI cannot reflect the new containment relationship of the MOI. As the DN attribute is not writeable, it’s impossible to change the DN directly on an existing MOI. Hence, a new MOI needs to be created for that MOI and is assigned with a new DN to reflect the new containment relationship. This process will cause resource waste and complicate the object management. Further, since the data related to the MO (such as Fault Management (FM) data, Performance Management (PM) data, and/or Security Management (SM) data) were associated with the DN, the related data of the same MO can be correlated if the DN is changed. The re-parenting problems described above occur in all the communication networks, especially in both 4G and 5G networks.

In a second case, with the new network technologies, such as network slice, virtualization, and the like are introduced in the communication network (such as the 5G network) , it’s nature that one MOI can be contained by more than one parent MOI. For example, a Core NSS can be shared by two E2E NSSs, which means that a 5G MOI could have multiple parents. A single DN for a MOI does not work well for this new paradigm. As one possible solution, multiple redundant MOIs with different DNs for the same MOI may need to be created for a single MOI to reflect this multi-parenting relationship without breaking the single-parent key concept of DN. Again, it’s big waste and will introduce complexity for object management. For example, this single-parent limitation may cause lengthy argument in Next Generation-Radio Access Network (NG-RAN) modeling and thus modeling a NG-RAN node with/without a 2-way or 3-way split becomes impossible. In this case, the historical FM/PM/SM data also cannot be correlated because the different DNs make the analytics services for the MOI fail to work correctly. More extra works may need to keep the historical data associated with the DNs of the MOIs to be correlated together.

There is proposed to utilize other unique identifiers to identify functional units of a base station (such as CU and DU of a base station) so as to address the problem caused by DN in cell rehoming. However, this proposal aims at addressing the specific problem in cell rehoming only and it is not a general and effective solution to be used in network management.

According to embodiments of the present disclosure, there is proposed a solution for MOI identification. In the solution of the present disclosure, attribute information assigned to a MOI comprises at least unchangeable identification information uniquely and persistently identifying the MOI and changeable parenting information indicating a number of parent MOIs containing the MOI in a hierarchy. If the parent MOI changes, the parenting information is changed while the identification information remains unchanged. According to the present solution, the identification information is kept persistent for a MOI and the parenting information is changeable to reflect the real time parenting relationship between the MOIs correctly and dynamically, which thereby simplifies object management and saves resource in the network management system. Moreover, with the persistent identifier, it is possible to enable correlation of data related to the same managed object (throughout the managed entity lifecycle) . This solution is applicable in the network management in all the cases.

Principle and implementations of the present disclosure will be described below in detail with reference to Fig. 2, which shows a process 200 of object management according to an embodiment of the present disclosure. For the purpose of discussion, the process 200 will be described with reference to Fig. 1. The process 200 may be implemented by the network management entity 110 in Fig. 1.

At block 210, the network management entity 110 assigns attribute information to a MOI. The MOI is organized with one or more other MOIs in a hierarchy. In the example of Fig. 1, the MOIs 121 to 126, each logically representing network functions, are organized in a hierarchy 120. As mentioned above, in such a hierarchy, a MOI containing another MOI is referred to as a parent MOI (or superior) of the other MOI, while the contained MOI is referred to as a child MOI (or a subordinate) . A MOI is created for network management. When a MOI is created, attribute information is generated and assigned to the MOI as attributes of this MOI, which may facilitate the network management operations.

According to embodiments of the present disclosure, the attribute information comprises an identifier uniquely and persistently identifying the MOI. This identifier has an unchangeable and globally unique attribute, which allows the MOI to be identified persistently. In addition, the identification information is not-writeable and persistent during the whole lifecycle of the MOI. In some embodiments, the multiplicity of the identification information attribute is 1. In some embodiments, the identification information comprises a UUID of the MOI. According to the existing communication specifications, UUID does not used in the management space but is used to identify instance of NF service for signalling purposes. In the embodiments of the present disclosure, considering the unique property of UUID, it is introduced into the management space to identify the MOI uniquely and persistently. Of course, in some other embodiments, other unique identifiers may also be generated and used to identify the MOI alone or in combination with the UUID.

The attribute information further comprises parenting information indicating a number of parent MOI containing the MOI. The parenting information may be a referenced parent list for the MOI and indicates how the MOI is contained by its parent MOI(s) in the hierarchy (i.e., the parenting relationship of the MOI) . In other words, the parenting information may indicate a place of the MOI in the hierarchy with respect to one or more other MOIs. When a MOI is created, the parenting information is set according to the current parent MOI (s) . The parenting information is changeable so as to reflect the real time parenting relationship between the MOIs correctly and dynamically. In the hierarchy, a MOI may not be contained by any other MOI or may be contained by one or more parent MOIs. That is, the number of the parent MOI indicated in the parenting information may be zero, one, or greater than one. Thus, the multiplicity of the parenting information is not limited, which means that means the number of the parent MOIs can be 0, 1 or multiple.

In the case where a MOI is not contained by any other MOI, such as the root MOI 121 in the hierarchy 120 of Fig. 1, the parenting information may be null, indicating that no parent MOIs for this MOI. In the case where a MOI is contained by one or more parent MOIs in the hierarchy, the parenting information may comprise information of the one or more parent MOIs. In some embodiments, the parenting information may comprise identification information of the one or more parent MOIs so as to identify these parent MOIs. In some embodiments, the identification information may be identification information comprised in the attribute information assigned to the one or more parent MOIs.

In some embodiments, the parenting information related to one MOI may comprise information of the parent MOI (s) in one upper hierarchical layer only. For example, for the MOI 124, its parenting information may comprise information of its parent MOIs 122 and 123 (such as the UUIDs of the MOI 122 and 133) . Other information related to the parent MOI (s) , such as the parenting information and the classification information may be stored in association with the parent MOI (s) . Thus, by tracing back step by step according to the identification information of the parent MOIs of the current MOI, the parenting information of MOIs at the much higher layers in the hierarchy can be obtained until the root MOI. As such, the hierarchy of MOIs can be derived from the parenting information of each MOI.

In some embodiments, the parenting information in the attribute information of the MOI may also comprise parenting information of its one or more parent MOIs, in addition to the identification information of the parent MOI (s) . In this way, the information of each of the parent MOIs comprised in the parenting information for one MOI is provided in a hierarchy data structure. The hierarchy structure of all the MOIs can be directly derived from the parenting information of each MOI with such data structure.

As an alternative, or in addition, if a MOI is contained by one or more parent MOIs, the parenting information for a MOI may comprise a DN identifying a MOI for each of the one or more parent MOIs, which is changeable here.

In some embodiments, the attribute information of a MOI may further comprise classification information indicating a class of the MOI. The classification information may be defined as a class name of the MOI after the MOI is created. Each of the MOIs in the hierarchy is classified into a class and the class name may help identify what the MOI is quickly. The classification information is unchangeable. In some embodiments, the parenting information in the attribute information of a MOI may further include classification information indicating the class (es) of the parent MOI (s) of this MOI.

In some embodiments, the network management entity 110 may obtain data related to a MOI. The network management entity 110 may associate the obtained data with the attribute information of the MOI. The obtained data may comprise, for example, FM data, PM data, SM data, and any other data that are used in the network management. In some embodiments, the identification information, classification information and parenting information in the attribute information may be included in the FM data and/or PM data. In some embodiments, the identification information of the MOI included in the attribute information may be included in the SM data. In this way, the FM/PM/SM data on the same MOI that is obtained from different sources and/or times may be correlated based on the unique identification information of the MOI.

The parent MOI (s) of a MOI may be changed during the lifecycle of its MOI. Referring back to the process 200, at block 220, the network management entity 110 detects whether a change in the parent MOI (s) . The change in the parent MOI (s) is due to a change in deployment of the corresponding network functions. If a change in the parent MOI (s) is detected, at block 230, the network management entity 110 updates the attribute information of the MOI. As mentioned above, in the attribute information, the identification information is unchangeable as well as the classification information, but the parenting information is changeable. Thus, when updating the attribute information, the parenting information is changed so as to reflect the new parenting relationship, while the identification and the classification information (if any) are not changed. If no change is detected at block 220, the network management entity 110 may continue monitoring the hierarchy of the MOIs.

The attribute information assignment and update for one MOI is discussed above. For any MOI created for network management, the same assignment and update of attribute information may be performed. The parent MOI (s) of a MOI may be changed due to various factors in the communication network, and thus may cause a change in the parenting information of the MOI. In general, a change in the parent MOIs may be caused due to an update of a parent MOI to another parent MOI, an addition of a new parent MOI, and/or a deletion of an existing parent MOI. The network management entity 110 may monitor the MOIs so as to detect whether one or more of the above changes occur and then determine how to update the attribute information of the related MOI (s) .

Fig. 3 illustrates a flowchart of a process 300 of attribute information update for a MOI according to some embodiments of the present disclosure. The process 300 may be considered as a specific implementation of the

blocks

220 and 230 in the process 200 and may also be implemented by the network management entity 110 of Fig. 1.

At block 310, the network management entity 110 detects whether a parent MOI changes to a new one. Fig. 4A shows a change of the hierarchy 120 of MOIs where the MOI 122 in the hierarchy 120 is changed to a new MOI 402. Thus, the parenting information of the MOI 124 changes. Such change of the parent MOI may also be referred to as re-parenting of the MOI.

If it is detected that a previous parent (referred to as a first parent MOI) is changed to a new parent MOI (referred to as a second parent MOI) , at block 320, the network management entity 110 updates the attribute information of the MOI by replacing information of the first parent MOI with information of the second parent MOI in the parenting information. For example, the identification information, parenting information, and classification information of the first parent MOI may be removed and the identification information, parenting information, and classification information of the second parent MOI may be added. In some embodiments, more than one parent MOI of the MOI may be changed to corresponding new parent MOIs, and then the attribute information of the MOI may also be updated accordingly to reflect the new parenting information.

If it is detected that no parent MOI is changed to a new one, the network management entity 110 continues to detect, at block 330, whether the MOI is contained by a new parent MOI. The new parent MOI may be newly added to the hierarchy or may be existed in the hierarchy but is changed to contain (attach to) this MOI. Fig. 4B shows a change of the hierarchy 120 of MOIs where a new MOI 404 is added to the hierarchy 120 and contains the MOI 124. Thus, the parenting information of the MOI 124 changes.

If it is detected that the MOI is contained by a new parent MOI (also referred to as a third parent MOI sometimes herein) , at block 340, the network management entity 110 updates the attribute information of the MOI by adding information of the third MOI into the parenting information. For example, the identification information, parenting information, and classification information of a MOI of the third parent MOI may be added into the parenting information of the current MOI so as to indicate the new parenting information of the corresponding MOI.

If it is detected that the MOI is not changed to be contained by a new MOI, the network management entity 110 continues to detect, at block 350, whether a parent MOI (also referred to as a fourth parent MOI sometimes herein) is detected from the MOI. The detachment of the parent MOI indicates that the MOI is not contained by this parent MOI, which may due to the deletion of the MOI from the hierarchy or merely due to the containment between the parent MOI and that child MOI changes (the parent MOI may be still present in the hierarchy to contain other MOI (s) for management) . Fig. 4C shows a change of the hierarchy 120 of MOIs where the MOI 122 is deleted from the hierarchy 120. Thus, the parenting information of the MOI 124 changes.

If it is detected that the no parent MOI is detected from the MOI, at block 360, the network management entity 110 updates the attribute information of the MOI by deleting information of the fourth parent MOI from the parenting information. For example, the identification information, parenting information, and classification information of a MOI of the fourth MOI may be deleted from the parenting information so as to reflect the new parenting relationship.

In some embodiments, if the network management entity 110 does not detect any parent MOI that is detected from the MOI at block 350, which means that all the three types of change are not occurred. In this case, the network management entity 110 may take no update to the attribute information. In some embodiments, the parenting information in the attribute information of the MOI may be updated due to the update on the parenting information for its parent MOI.

Although the detections of the three types of change in the parenting information has been described in the process 300 in a particular order, it would be appreciated that the detections may be performed in any other different order or even in parallel. In some embodiments, the detection of one or more types of change may not be performed, for example, because it is believed that such change may not happen for a certain MOI.

To better understand the change of the parent MOI, some specific examples will be described below. It would be appreciated that these examples are provided to have a better understanding of the embodiments of the present disclosure but are not to suggest any limitations to the scope of the present disclosure.

A first example is related to re-parenting of MOIs due to rehoming of a base station (such as a NodeB) . In this example, a NodeB MF may be created under a RNC MF (represented as “mc-1” ) and as high load or congestion of hosted RNC, the NodeB function may be re-homed and associated with another RNC MFI (referred to as “rnc-2” ) .

According to the existing DN-based identification mechanism, a DN of an instance created for the NodeB MF (referred to as NodeB MF Instance (MFI) ) may include the name (such as rnc-1) of the parent MOI created for the RNC MF (referred to as RNC MFI) . If the NodeB MF is re-homed from a RNC MF to another RNC MF, the DN of the NodeB MFI should be changed to reflect the new parent. In the existing communication specification, the attribute of DN is unwritten. Thus, a new NodeB MFI should be created with a new DN which includes the name of the new RNC MF (such as rnc-2) . This process may result in resource waste and management complexity. In addition, as the data related to the NodeB MF are identified by the NodeB MFI, by creating different MFIs and assigning different DNs, the data of the same NodeB MF cannot be correlated after the re-homing.

According to the embodiments of the present disclosure, an UUID (e.g. 00112233-4455-6677-8899-aabbccddeeff) is generated and assigned to the NodeB MFI when the MFI is created. The class name (represented as objectName) of the NodeB MF (e.g. nodebMF) may be set as a classification information of the NodeB MFI. In addition, a parenting information is derived according to the containing RNC MF (e.g. [rncMF=00112233-4455-6677-8899-aabbccddeef1) ) and is assigned to the NodeB MFI. Then the attribute information of the NodeB MFI is {UUID =00112233-4455-6677-8899-aabbccddeeff, objectName=nodebMF, parenting information = [rncMF= 00112233-4455-6677-8899-aabbccddeef1] } .

After the re-homing, the parent RNC MF is changed to rnc-2. According to the embodiments of the present disclosure, no new MF instance needs to be created. The identification information and classification information of the Node MFI are not changed and only the parenting information needs to be updated to reflect the new parenting information. Thus, the attribute information of the NodeB MFI after re-homing is as {UUID = 00112233-4455-6677-8899-aabbccddeeff, objectName = nodebMF, parenting information = [rncMF = 00112233-4455-6677-8899-aabbccddeef2] } .

UUID, objectName and parenting information in the attribute information may be included in FM/PM data of the NodeB MF. The FM/PM function may correlate the data based on UUID and may also filter the data and show data relationship and object hierarchy based on objectName and parenting information.

A second example is related to a self-healing radio access network (RAN) supported by a Managed Function pool. In this example, one or more functional units of a base station (such as a gNB) can be replaced by standby functional units in the pool in case of failure. It is assumed that a gNB is split to a CU and a DU. A CU MOI is contained by a gNB MOI in the hierarchy. It is assumed that the containment of the CU MOI and the gNB in the hierarchy is represented as <HW RAN subnet>/<gNB #21>/<CU#21-1>/<subnet of cells #21-1-xx>.

According the existing DN-based identification mechanism, the CU MOI is uniquely identified by its DN “<HW RAN subnet>/<gNB #21>/<CU#21-1>/. ” It is assumed that there is another “hot standby” CU that is not serving any gNB and therefore has no cells it supports. According to the DN concept, the only way to identify the standby CU MOI is <HW RAN subnet>/<standby pool>/<CU#00>, which is the DN of the standby CU MOI. If the active CU (identified by “<HW RAN subnet>/<gNB #21>/<CU#21-1>/” ) has failed and the gNB is healed by replacing the failed CU with the standby CU from the pool. Then the actual DN of the previous active CU MOI will be changed to <HW RAN subnet>/<gNB #21>/<CU#00>, and the actual DN of the standby CU MOI will be changed to <HW RAN subnet>/<gNB #21>/<CU#21-1>/<subnet of cells #21-1-xx>. As such, the DN of the same CU MOI is changed and the DN cannot be used to uniquely identify the history FM/PM data of the CU MOIs anymore.

According to the embodiments of the present disclosure, after the re-healing with the standby CU, the identification information (UUID) of the CU MOI and the classification information for the CU MOI will not be changed but keep persistent even if the parent and child of the CU MOI changed. The parenting information can be updated to reflect the change of the parent MOI.

A third example is related to managed function re-parenting due to dynamic change of network slice or network slice subnet (NSS) . Auto-scaling is enabled in new generation network such as the 5G network to provide high flexibility and efficiency. The core and radio Network Functions (NFs) are deployed as a resource pool to support dynamically scaling requirements of the network. For example, a NSS can be scaled out/in based on the service level requirements of its supported communication services and runtime traffic load of the NSS and its contained NSSs or NFs. Also, a NSS can be created or terminated based on the deployment strategy and service requirements. During the lifecycle of a NSS, its contained NFs can be attached to/detached from the NSS dynamically, which means that the parents of the related MFI for this NF may be changed dynamically and frequently.

According the existing DN-based identification mechanism, an instance of the MF (MFI) needs to be created and terminated frequently and the DN of the MFI may also be changed dramatically. It’s very difficult to manage the MFI and its resource in this situation, and the FM/PM data of the same NF cannot be correlated after the DN of the MF changed. In addition, the DN based identification information can be used for a user to authenticate the NF to its far entity network function. The authentication would fail if the DN was changed.

According to the embodiments of the present disclosure, only one MFI need to be created for each NF in the resource pool. An UUID is generated and assigned to each MFI. When a NF is attached to/detached from a NSS during the scaling or other lifecycle change of the NSS, the MFI and its UUID is persistent. The parenting information is updated to reflect the adding/removing of the parent MFI. In addition, all FM/PM data of the same NF can be correlated based on UUID of the MFI. The UUID can also be used for a user to authenticate the NF to its far entity network function.

A fourth example is related to a multi-parent case. After the Network Slice and NSS are introduced in the communication network, a MF/NSS can be contained by multiple NSSs. According to the existing DN-based mechanism, multiple redundant MOIs with different DNs need to be created for a MOI of a single MF/NSS. For example, a Core NSS (represented as “nss-core-1” ) may be shared by two E2E NSSs (represented as “nss-e2e-1” and “nss-e2e-2” ) . Thus, two NSS MOIs need to be created and a different DN would be assigned to each NSS MOI. This solution not only duplicates the MOIs and complicates the resource management, but also cause inconsistency of the FM/PM data. Thus, the FM/PM data of the same NSS cannot be correlated and the analytics service for the NSSI fails to work correctly.

According to the embodiments of the present disclosure, a single instance of the NSS (referred to as NSSI) need to be created for the shared NSS. A persistent UUID is generated and assigned to the NSSI. Parenting information is derived and set on the NSS to reflect one to multiple parenting information between the child NSS and its parent NSSs. In addition, all FM/PM data of the same NSS can be correlated based on UUID of the NSSI. This solution simplifies the resource management. The analytics service can detect the network problem and fix the issue more effectively based on the consistent and integrated FM/PM data.

A fifth example is related to an alternative modeling approach for an access network node. The new access network (such as the 5G RAN) supports a deployment scenario where the access network node is "split" either a 2-way (as CU and DU) or a 3-way (as DU, CU-CP, and CU-UP) . The DU (s) and CU (s) of the same network node (such as gNB) may be supplied by different vendors and therefore will be managed independently. This situation is reflected by each of the MFs corresponding to the CUs/DUs being contained by separate instances of MEs. However, the gNB represented as a MF in such scenario is being supported by multiple MEs, which violates the single-parent rule of the existing DN-based mechanism.

According to the embodiments of the present disclosure, multiple-parenting information is possible for the same MOI and the modelling of a gNB as a MF with CUs and DUs supplied by multiple vendors becomes possible.

As can be seen from the above examples, the MOI identification solution according to the present disclosure can be applicable in different scenarios of communications. The persistency and consistency of the MOI identification can be maintained in the network management space regardless the location of the MOI in the hierarchy, and the real time parenting information between MOIs can always be indicated correctly and dynamically.

In some embodiments, an apparatus capable of performing any of the processes 200 and 300 (for example, the network management entity 110) may comprise means for performing the respective steps of any of the

processes

200 and 300. The means may be implemented in any suitable form. For example, the means may be implemented in a circuitry or software module.

In some embodiments, the apparatus comprises means for assigning attribute information to a managed object instance, the attribute information at least comprising unchangeable identification information uniquely and persistently identifying the managed object instance, and changeable parenting information indicating a number of parent managed object instances containing the managed object instance in a hierarchy, the number being zero, one, or greater than one; and means for updating, in response to detecting a change in the parent managed object instances, the attribute information by changing the parenting information without changing the identification information.

In some embodiments, the apparatus may further comprise means for performing any of the functions of the network management entity 110 as described herein. In some embodiments, the means comprises at least one processor; and at least one memory including computer program code, the at least one memory and computer program code configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the performance of the apparatus.

Fig. 5 illustrates a simplified block diagram of a device 500 that is suitable for implementing embodiments of the present disclosure. The device 500 may be embodied as or comprised in the network management entity 110 shown in Fig. 1.

The apparatus 500 comprises at least one processor 511, such as a data processor (DP) and at least one memory (MEM) 512 coupled to the processor 511. The apparatus 500 may further include a transmitter TX and receiver RX 513 coupled to the processor 511, which may be operable to communicatively connect to other apparatuses. The MEM 512 stores a program or computer program code 514. The at least one memory 512 and the computer program code 514 are configured to, with the at least one processor 511, cause the apparatus 500 at least to perform in accordance with embodiments of the present disclosure, for example the process 200 and/or the process 300.

A combination of the at least one processor 511 and the at least one MEM 512 may form processing means 515 configured to implement various embodiments of the present disclosure.

Various embodiments of the present disclosure may be implemented by computer program executable by the processor 511, software, firmware, hardware or in a combination thereof.

The MEM 512 may be of any type suitable to the local technical environment and may be implemented using any suitable data storage technology, such as semiconductor based memory devices, magnetic memory devices and systems, optical memory devices and systems, fixed memory and removable memory, as non-limiting examples.

The processor 511 may be of any type suitable to the local technical environment, and may include one ormore of general purpose computers, special purpose computers, microprocessors, digital signal processors (DSPs) and processors based on multicore processor architecture, as non-limiting examples.

Although some of the above descriptions on the GD based signal detection and staged signal detection are made in the context of a wireless communication system shown in Fig. 1, it should not be construed as limiting the spirit and scope of the present disclosure. The principle and concept of the present disclosure may be more generally applicable to other scenarios.

In addition, the present disclosure may also provide a carrier containing the computer program as mentioned above (e.g., computer instructions/grogram code 514 in Fig. 5) . The carrier includes a computer readable storage medium and a transmission medium. The computer readable storage medium may include, for example, an optical compact disk or an electronic memory device like a RAM (random access memory) , a ROM (read only memory) , Flash memory, magnetic tape, CD-ROM, DVD, Blue-ray disc and the like. The transmission medium may include, for example, electrical, optical, radio, acoustical or other form of propagated signals, such as carrier waves, infrared signals, and the like.

Generally, various embodiments of the present disclosure may be implemented in hardware or special purpose circuits, software, logic or any combination thereof. Some aspects may be implemented in hardware, while other aspects may be implemented in firmware or software which may be executed by a controller, microprocessor or other computing device. While various aspects of embodiments of the present disclosure are illustrated and described as block diagrams, flowcharts, or using some other pictorial representations, it is to be understood that block, apparatus, system, technique or method described herein may be implemented in, as non-limiting examples, hardware, software, firmware, special purpose circuits or logic, general purpose hardware or controller or other computing devices, or some combination thereof.

The present disclosure also provides at least one computer program product tangibly stored on a non-transitory computer readable storage medium. The computer program product includes computer-executable instructions, such as those included in program modules, being executed in a device on a target real or virtual processor, to carry out the process 200 and/or the process 300 as described above with reference to Figs. 2 and 3. Generally, program modules include routines, programs, libraries, objects, classes, components, data structures, or the like that perform particular tasks or implement particular abstract data types. The functionality of the program modules may be combined or split between program modules as desired in various embodiments. Machine-executable instructions for program modules may be executed within a local or distributed device. In a distributed device, program modules may be located in both local and remote storage media.

Program code for carrying out methods of the present disclosure may be written in any combination of one or more programming languages. These program codes may be provided to a processor or controller of a general purpose computer, special purpose computer, or other programmable data processing apparatus, such that the program codes, when executed by the processor or controller, cause the functions/operations specified in the flowcharts and/or block diagrams to be implemented. The program code may execute entirely on a machine, partly on the machine, as a stand-alone software package, partly on the machine and partly on a remote machine or entirely on the remote machine or server.

In the context of the present disclosure, the computer program codes or related data may be carried by any suitable carrier to enable the device, apparatus or processor to perform various processes and operations as described above. Examples of the carrier include a signal, computer readable media.

The computer readable medium may be a computer readable signal medium or a computer readable storage medium. A computer readable medium may include but not limited to an electronic, magnetic, optical, electromagnetic, infrared, or semiconductor system, apparatus, or device, or any suitable combination of the foregoing. More specific examples of the computer readable storage medium would include an electrical connection having one or more wires, a portable computer diskette, a hard disk, a random access memory (RAM) , a read-only memory (ROM) , an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM or Flash memory) , an optical fiber, a portable compact disc read-only memory (CD-ROM) , an optical storage device, a magnetic storage device, or any suitable combination of the foregoing.

For the purpose of the present disclosure as described herein above, it should be noted that,

- method steps likely to be implemented as software code portions and being run using a processor at a network element or terminal (as examples of devices, apparatuses and/or modules thereof, or as examples of entities including apparatuses and/or modules therefore) , are software code independent and can be specified using any known or future developed programming language as long as the functionality defined by the method steps is preserved;

- generally, any method step is suitable to be implemented as software or by hardware without changing the idea of the invention in terms of the functionality implemented;

- method steps and/or devices, units or means likely to be implemented as hardware components at the above-defined apparatuses, or any module (s) thereof, (e.g., devices carrying out the functions of the apparatuses according to the embodiments as described above, eNode-B etc. as described above) are hardware independent and can be implemented using any known or future developed hardware technology or any hybrids of these, such as MOS (Metal Oxide Semiconductor) , CMOS (Complementary MOS) , BiMOS (Bipolar MOS) , BiCMOS (Bipolar CMOS) , ECL (Emitter Coupled Logic) , TTL (Transistor-Transistor Logic) , etc., using for example ASIC (Application Specific IC (Integrated Circuit) ) components, FPGA (Field-programmable Gate Arrays) components, CPLD (Complex Programmable Logic Device) components or DSP (Digital Signal Processor) components;

- devices, units or means (e.g. the above-defined apparatuses, or any one of their respective means) can be implemented as individual devices, units or means, but this does not exclude that they are implemented in a distributed fashion throughout the system, as long as the functionality of the device, unit or means is preserved;

- an apparatus may be represented by a semiconductor chip, a chipset, or a (hardware) module comprising such chip or chipset; this, however, does not exclude the possibility that a functionality of an apparatus or module, instead of being hardware implemented, be implemented as software in a (software) module such as a computer program or a computer program product comprising executable software code portions for execution/being run on a processor;

- a device may be regarded as an apparatus or as an assembly of more than one apparatus, whether functionally in cooperation with each other or functionally independently of each other but in a same device housing, for example.

It is noted that the embodiments and examples described above are provided for illustrative purposes only and are in no way intended that the present disclosure is restricted thereto. Rather, it is the intention that all variations and modifications be included which fall within the spirit and scope of the appended claims.

Further, while operations are depicted in a particular order, this should not be understood as requiring that such operations be performed in the particular order shown or in sequential order, or that all illustrated operations be performed, to achieve desirable results. In certain circumstances, multitasking and parallel processing may be advantageous. Likewise, while several specific implementation details are contained in the above discussions, these should not be construed as limitations on the scope of the present disclosure, but rather as descriptions of features that may be specific to particular embodiments. Certain features that are described in the context of separate embodiments may also be implemented in combination in a single embodiment. Conversely, various features that are described in the context of a single embodiment may also be implemented in multiple embodiments separately or in any suitable sub-combination.

Although the present disclosure has been described in languages specific to structural features and/or methodological acts, it is to be understood that the present disclosure defined in the appended claims is not necessarily limited to the specific features or acts described above. Rather, the specific features and acts described above are disclosed as example forms of implementing the claims.

Various embodiments of the techniques have been described. In addition to or as an alternative to the above, the following examples are described. The features described in any of the following examples may be utilized with any of the other examples described herein.

Claims

A method of object management, comprising:

assigning attribute information to a managed object instance, the attribute information at least comprising unchangeable identification information uniquely and persistently identifying the managed object instance, and changeable parenting information indicating a number of parent managed object instances containing the managed object instance in a hierarchy, the number being zero, one, or greater than one; and

in response to detecting a change in the parent managed object instances, updating the attribute information by changing the parenting information without changing the identification information.
The method of claim 1, wherein the attribute information further comprise classification information indicating a class of the managed object instance, and wherein the attribute information is updated without changing the classification information.
The method of claim 1, wherein the number is one or greater than one, the parenting information of the managed object instance comprises identification information of the number of parent managed objects.
The method of claim 3, wherein the parenting information of the managed object instance further comprises at least one of the following:

parenting information of the number of parent managed object instances; and

classification information indicating classes of the number of the parent managed object instances.
The method of claim 1, wherein updating the attribute information comprises:

in response to detecting that a first parent managed object instance containing the managed object instance is changed to a second parent managed object instance, updating the attribute information by replacing information of the first parent managed object instance comprised in the parenting information with information of the second parent managed object instance.
The method of claim 1, wherein updating the attribute information comprises:

in response to detecting that the managed object instance is contained by a third parent managed object instance, updating the attribute information by adding information of the third parent managed object instance into the parenting information.
The method of claim 1, wherein updating the attribute information comprises:

in response to detecting that a fourth parent managed object instance is detached from the managed object instance, updating the attribute information by deleting information of the fourth parent managed object from the parenting information.
The method of claim 1, further comprising:

obtaining data related to the managed object instance; and

associating the obtained data with the attribute information of the managed object instance.
The method of claim 1, wherein the managed object instance is corresponding to at least one of:

a Managed Function,

a Managed Element,

a sub-network of a communication network,

a Network Slice, or

a Network Slice Subnet.
An apparatus for object management, comprising:

at least one processor; and

at least one memory including computer program codes;

the at least one memory and the computer program codes are configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the apparatus at least to:

assign attribute information to a managed object instance, the attribute information at least comprising unchangeable identification information uniquely and persistently identifying the managed object instance, and changeable parenting information indicating a number of parent managed object instances containing the managed object instance in a hierarchy, the number being zero, one, or greater than one; and

in response to detecting a change in the parent managed object instances, update the attribute information by changing the parenting information without changing the identification information.
The apparatus of claim 10, wherein the attribute information further comprise classification information indicating a class of the managed object instance, and wherein the attribute information is updated without changing the classification information.
The apparatus of claim 10, wherein the number is one or greater than one, and the parenting information of the managed object instance comprises identification information of the number of parent managed objects.
The apparatus of claim 12, wherein the parenting information of the managed object instance further comprises at least one of the following:

parenting information of the number of parent managed object instances; and

classification information indicating classes of the number of the parent managed object instances.
The apparatus of claim 10, wherein the at least one memory and the computer program codes are configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the apparatus to:

in response to detecting that a first parent managed object instance containing the managed object instance is changed to a second parent managed object instance, update the attribute information by replacing information of the first parent managed object instance comprised in the parenting information with information of the second parent managed object instance.
The apparatus of claim 10, wherein the at least one memory and the computer program codes are configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the apparatus to:

in response to detecting that the managed object instance is contained by a third parent managed object instance, update the attribute information by adding information of the third parent managed object instance into the parenting information.
The apparatus of claim 10, wherein the at least one memory and the computer program codes are configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the apparatus to:

in response to detecting that a fourth parent managed object instance is detached from the managed object instance, update the attribute information by deleting information of the fourth parent managed object from the parenting information.
The apparatus of claim 10, wherein the at least one memory and the computer program codes are configured to, with the at least one processor, further cause the apparatus to:

obtain data related to the managed object instance; and

associate the obtained data with the identification information of the managed object instance.
The apparatus of claim 10, wherein the managed object instance is corresponding to at least one of:

a Managed Function,

a Managed Element,

a sub-network of a communication network,

a Network Slice, or

a Network Slice Subnet.
An apparatus for object management, comprising:

means for assigning attribute information to a managed object instance, the attribute information at least comprising unchangeable identification information uniquely and persistently identifying the managed object instance, and changeable parenting information indicating a number of parent managed object instances containing the managed object instance in a hierarchy, the number being zero, one, or greater than one; and

means for updating, in response to detecting a change in the parent managed object instances, the attribute information by changing the parenting information without changing the identification information.
The apparatus of claim 19, wherein the means comprises:

at least one processor; and

at least one memory including computer program code, the at least one memory and computer program code configured to, with the at least one processor, cause the performance of the apparatus.
A non-transitory computer readable medium comprising program instructions for causing an apparatus to perform at least the following:

assigning attribute information to a managed object instance, the attribute information at least comprising unchangeable identification information uniquely and persistently identifying the managed object instance, and changeable parenting information indicating a number of parent managed object instances containing the managed object instance in a hierarchy, the number being zero, one, or greater than one; and

in response to detecting a change in the parent managed object instances, updating the attribute information by changing the parenting information without changing the identification information.