Data access method and apparatus for communications network

摘要

A data monitoring apparatus for monitoring a communications network comprises a processor; a data storage medium; a graphical user interface; a plurality of communications ports for communicating with network elements, eg switches, cross-connects; a data visualization module; a navigation engine module for searching data; a data extraction engine module for accessing and obtaining data for data sources including the data storage medium and said network elements; a task engine module for filtering a search of data, a graph engine module for preparing data into graphical format, a module for controlling the other modules and an intelligent help module to guide a user of the apparatus. A management information base stores a network model data and technology model data which is arranged in the data visualizer module into a three dimensional data space. Network elements are represented at discrete data locations within a 3D data space of the data storage medium.