US Patent 6959329 System and method for transforming configuration commands

A system and method for generating network device-specific configuration commands from device-neutral configuration commands is described. To generate a device-specific configuration command from a device-neutral configuration command, the described device, in one embodiment, determines a target network device's characteristics. Using that characteristic data, a lookup key is generated for the code that is being converted from a device-neutral format to a device-specific format. That lookup key can be used to access a configuration schema and to locate the information necessary for converting the command to a device-specific format. Using the configuration schema, the device-specific configuration command can be generated.