A method is disclosed for monitoring responses of configuration commands using MIB-based and event-based approaches. According to one embodiment, a network element receives a configuration that comprises one or more configuration commands. A command response table, which comprises a plurality of command response entries, is created and stored. The command response table is defined by a MIB. The network element stores information, which describes errors that occurred while executing the plurality of commands in the configuration file, into the command response entries of the command response table. Management applications can query the MIB to obtain details about errors that occurred during execution of the configuration.