Prior art

To identify the most relevant prior art for US Patent 8379538, I will examine the patent's citations. The patent text itself incorporates several co-pending and commonly assigned US patent applications by reference, indicating their close relationship and potential as relevant prior art.

Here are the prior art references explicitly mentioned and incorporated by reference within US Patent 8379538, along with their potential implications for anticipation under 35 U.S.C. § 102:

1. US Patent Application Ser. No. 11/158,776

• Full Citation: U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/158,776, titled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR AUTONOMOUSLY CONFIGURING A REPORTING NETWORK”
• Publication/Filing Date: June 22, 2005 (This is the filing date of US11/158,756, which US8379538 claims priority from and is related to this application, suggesting the same priority date).
• Brief Description: This application describes an exemplary overlay network that gathers, stores, provides value-added processing, and/or correlates monitoring data received from data collection agents. It also discusses how reporting services may reconfigure the overlay network based on changes in data consumer desires, data collector availability, or network topology.
• Potential Anticipated Claims: This reference appears highly relevant to claims involving the reporting network and its autonomous configuration, particularly elements of Claim 4, 10, 16, and 21 that mention "information specifying reporting network desires" and the reporting network itself. It also generally relates to the system described in Claim 13 and 21, specifically regarding the reporting service.

2. US Patent Application Ser. No. 11/158,868

• Full Citation: U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/158,868, titled “SYSTEM FOR METRIC INTROSPECTION IN MONITORING SOURCES”
• Publication/Filing Date: June 22, 2005 (This is the filing date of US11/158,756, which US8379538 claims priority from and is related to this application, suggesting the same priority date).
• Brief Description: This application details metric introspection interfaces within monitoring sources that enable information services to access metric definitions.
• Potential Anticipated Claims: This reference is relevant to how metric models are accessed and understood. It could potentially anticipate aspects of Claim 1, 7, 13, and 17, which discuss the "metric model identifying which monitoring data is collected at a data collection agent" and the information services comprising the machine-readable monitoring model.

3. US Patent Application Ser. No. 11/158,376

• Full Citation: U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/158,376, titled “SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR USING MACHINE-READABLE META-MODELS FOR INTERPRETING DATA MODELS IN A COMPUTING ENVIRONMENT”
• Publication/Filing Date: June 22, 2005 (This is the filing date of US11/158,756, which US8379538 claims priority from and is related to this application, suggesting the same priority date).
• Brief Description: This application describes how information service 101 includes a meta-model service that provides common or standard semantics for interpreting models and metrics. It further states that machine-readable metric meta-models define the structure (e.g., syntax) used by corresponding metric models, enabling monitoring tools to dynamically adapt and understand monitoring data from different sources.
• Potential Anticipated Claims: This is highly relevant to claims that explicitly mention meta-models. Specifically, Claim 4, 10, 16, and 21, which state that the machine-readable monitoring model comprises "at least one meta-model that defines a structure of how information is represented in at least one data model," are directly impacted. It also informs the general concept of autonomous adaptation to configuration changes in Claim 1 and 7.

4. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/368,635

• Full Citation: U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/368,635, titled: “IMPROVING CONTENT CONSISTENCY IN A DATA ACCESS NETWORK SYSTEM”
• Publication/Filing Date: Not explicitly stated in US8379538, but it is described as "co-pending" and "commonly assigned" with an application number implying an earlier filing date than 11/158,756.
• Brief Description: This reference describes an exemplary scalable cache consistency mechanism that could be utilized to keep cached copies of topology and meta-model information up-to-date.
• Potential Anticipated Claims: This reference is relevant to the consistency mechanisms for the monitoring model's information. It could potentially anticipate aspects of claims related to maintaining configuration information, such as the machine-readable monitoring model itself (Claim 1, 7, 13, 17, 21), particularly in scenarios where data is cached and needs to remain consistent.

These co-pending applications are crucial prior art as they were filed on the same day (or earlier, in the case of 09/368,635) as the priority application for US8379538 and are explicitly incorporated by reference, meaning their content is considered part of the disclosure of US8379538. Therefore, any elements claimed in US8379538 that are fully disclosed in these earlier-filed, commonly owned applications could be anticipated under 35 U.S.C. § 102.