Abstract: A system, method, and apparatus for the automated configuration of storage pools are disclosed. An example method includes determining, as available storage devices, storage devices within a storage system that have availability to be placed into a storage pool and first filtering, based on a first portion of storage requirement information received from a third-party, the available storage devices to eliminate a first set of the available storage devices and determine remaining storage devices. The method also includes second filtering, based on a second portion of the storage requirement information, the remaining storage devices after the first filtering to eliminate a second set of the remaining storage device. The method further includes designating the storage devices remaining after the first and second filtering as identified storage devices and creating the storage pool based on the storage requirement information using at least one of the identified storage devices.

Abstract: A computer-implemented method and apparatus in a computer system of processing data generated by a first application program in a second application program during runtime. During runtime, the first application program generates a record including a plurality of fields, wherein at least one of the plurality of fields contains data generated by the first application program. Other of the plurality of fields containing descriptive information regarding the data. The record also includes a reference (e.g. a pointer, relative or absolute) to a tag record. The tag record describes the plurality of fields contained in the record. The tag record further recursively references a plurality of tag records each referencing an associated tag record identifying fields in a referred-to tag record. This continues, recursively, until ultimately, a root record is referenced including a self-referential tag identifying the fields in the root record.