A common information model (CIM) enables management application programs to receive uniformly rendered results regardless of the source of the information. A CIM object manager isolates the applications from internal components which retrieve the information from various sources and through various other components, and provides refinements to that model that improve the exchange of information. In addition to providing uniform rendering of management information to a client applications, the CIM object manager dynamically adapts to complement the capabilities of the information providers, whereby the information providers may do so in a highly flexible manner. The CIMOM also decomposes a client query to determine the appropriate source or sources of information necessary to resolve that query, and further handles client queries having inherited object classes to render appropriate results in a uniform manner.