1. A computer program product for a computing environment comprising provider processes for generating status information relating to one or more systems and consumer processes for obtaining selected information from the said status information, the program product comprising a computer usable medium having computer readable code means embodied in said medium for implementing a status facility, comprising computer readable program code means for defining and maintaining a tree data structure comprising nodes, computer readable program code means for defining and making accessible to the provider processes a set of provider methods, the provider methods comprising methods for the provider processes to create and define the content of nodes in the tree data structure, and computer readable program code means for defining and making accessible to the consumer processes a set of consumer methods, the consumer methods comprising methods for the consumer processes to access the content of nodes in the tree data structure.