Abstract: A system and method is disclosed for providing Common Information Model (CIM) clients access to classes and metadata that do not reside in the same CIM namespace by creating shadow association classes in each namespace referenced by associated classes. Classes in a predetermined namespace are enumerated by a CIM Object Manager (CIMOM) to identify association class instances, which are likewise enumerated and searched for reference properties pointing to other namespaces. Instances referencing other namespaces are added to a class list for the referenced namespace, along with its ancestors if the association class is derived. The namespace class lists are then traversed and association class instances in each list are written to an external Managed Object Format (MOF) file. These association class instances are referenced as a shadow association class and are served by a shadow provider.