A method and apparatus are provided to enable other system elements to
obtain configuration attribute modifications from a print management
system. An attribute broker provides two methods, register and advertise,
to facilitate necessary configuration changes. The register method is
called by other system elements to indicate an interest in a particular
attribute. In registering interest in an attribute, the system element
provides a callback function. The attribute broker maintains a list of all
attributes that have been registered and keeps the set of callback
functions for each registered attribute. Whenever a server configuration
attribute is modified, the server object uses the advertise method to
provide the attribute information to any system element that has
registered interest in that attribute. Upon receiving the advertisement of
an attribute, the attribute broker checks to see if any callback functions
have been registered for that attribute. If so, the attribute broker calls
each callback function. The callback function implementation then stores
the configuration attribute value in a virtual memory to be used by the
system elements whenever required.