Abstract: A system is provided for collecting information regarding a device or a user of a device. Information is collected from a discovery agent residing on the computer system. At certain times, the agent may be activated to collect the information. A sender transmits a discovery rule across a communication link to a computer system. The discovery agent and the discovery rule are separate code sequences or separate programs. The discovery rule is then applied to the information received from the discovery agent and the resulting information is returned back to the sender. Where the sender receives a user request, such as regarding the computer system, the discovery rule may be transmitted and the sender may use the resulting information to respond to the user request.

Abstract: A data filtering system is provided that filters data in multiple stages. The system provides a first filter criteria to a first device. The first device uses the first filter criteria to generate a first set of filtered data. The system receives the first set of filtered data from the first device and filters the received data based on a second filter criteria, which is different from the first filter criteria. The filtering of the first set of filtered data generates a second set of filtered data. The first filter criteria and the second filter criteria can be included in a profile data set. The profile data set may be associated with a particular data recipient. The first filter criteria contains public profile data and the second filter criteria contains private profile data. The profile data set may contain data elements associated with a particular class of data recipients or a particular data recipient role.

Abstract: A system is provided for collecting information regarding a device or a user of a device. Information is received from a discovery agent, which collects information when activated. The system determines a discovery rule to be applied to the information received from the discovery agent. The discovery rule is then applied to the information received from the discovery agent. The discovery agent and the discovery rule are separate code sequences or separate programs. A discovery engine receives the collected information from the discovery agent and applies the discovery rule to the collected information. The system may periodically activate the discovery agent to collect information. A typical system receives information from multiple discovery agents and applies multiple discovery rules to the received information. Each discovery agent includes a unique associated identifier. Additionally, the information collected by each discovery agent has an associated tag that identifies the data.