The Core Network Management Object Model of the present invention generically models the physical and logical objects in a configuration management system. The present invention also models the generic action objects required to manipulate the network objects. Unique object level information is isolated at the leaf level of the object model and is not proliferated to other generic parts of the model. The action objects all model different actions that need to be performed in a configuration application architecture and insulates the network objects from having any knowledge of session and event information. Leaf objects and actions are specialized to perform any configuration related actions. In the Core Network Management Object Model an Object Factory creates the unique object and an Action Factory creates the unique action. The action shall then be performed on the unique object to get, set and modify device information through SNMP and also to store the information in the database. This makes the object model for both the network objects and actions re-usable, scalable, and extendable. Use of the present invention drastically reduces development time and effort so that the same objects can be re-used in different applications and solutions.