The purpose of IRM is to model physical infrastructure and allow the users to manage it and is a model representing the simulation of the real world.
IRM object directly model their real-world counterparts
On the left side, there is a photograph of a network switch with Ethernet cables plugged into it, similar to the previous image. The components are labeled as follows:
Port: Indicates the port on the switch where the Ethernet cable is connected.
Plug: The connector at the end of the Ethernet cable inserted into the port.
Switch: The device that manages the network connections.
Cable: The physical Ethernet cable.
On the right side, the diagram shows a simplified representation of the physical components:
Equipment: Represents the physical device, like the switch, with a labeled Port.
Cable: Represents the Ethernet cable with a labeled Plug.
For example, a real-world server is modeled in IRM as an “equipment object” and a real-world circuit is modeled as a “circuit object”. Note that while the latter is not a physical object, it is a well defined item that (at least some) IRM users are used to working with outside the context of IRM. The design of IRM intentionally avoids creating abstractions that don’t directly correspond to things that exist in the real world, though a few of these are necessary for user convenience (a View, for example).
Like most (though not all) modern software, IRM is object-based in that the standard paradigm is to select some object and then either examine it or perform some operation on it. Think in terms of “what objects do I want to see or work on?” and then “what do I want to do with those objects?”. This is a bit different from software that is process-oriented, which tends to ask the questions in the other order: “what activity do I want to do?” and then “what things are involved in that activity?”.
One key part of this object-based design is that most objects have an “editor” or “properties” dialog that lets you see and change the properties of that object. Sometimes, to build a more complete picture about the object, some data must be taken from other objects, but for the most part this is minimized. Therefore, if you’re not seeing the data you want, you are likely looking at the wrong object.
