an u201c x u201d mark indicates that at least one of the packages has lost high availability the package is running but has no failover node a single point of failure exists if the package fails on this node it will go down the icon 115 for sysman 111 also indicates that at least one of the cluster 39 s packages is down it will be apparent to one skilled in the art that visual indicators other than color or the specific icons used in serviceguard may be implemented for instance an object 39 s border might be shaded or displayed with a different pattern of hash marks rather than color coded the actual visual indicators are not relevant to the invention except as relates to user preferences and ease of display as the monitored system becomes more complex the user network administrator may prefer to view various status indicators differently for instance some users may wish to eliminate yellow borders and only see red or green there may be more than three levels of readiness requiring additional colors etc therefore the present invention defines a method and system which allows separation of graphical display of object status from underlying data the data is preferably stored in managed object format mof files and defines visual indicators for display the application source code preferably utilizes a class schema and the modifiable file is read in and processed when the application is launched further.