A system and method is disclosed for managing objects in accordance with the Common Information Model. The system and method disclosed herein includes an abstract layer that receives requests from the CIM clients through the CIM Object Manager. After the receipt of a request, the abstract layer retrieves the associated XML registration file for the generation of a command to the managed object that is the target of the request. After the command is executed with respect to the managed object, the requested data is returned to the abstract layer. The data returned to the abstract layer is in the form of untransformed XML content. The abstract layer retrieves an XSL transformation file and transforms the XML content into an instance of CIM data and transfers this data to the CIM Object Manager.