1. A method for use in displaying data storage system information, the method comprising: providing a graphical user interface (GUI) comprising a tree structure of logically separated GUI components, each of the GUI components being representative of one of multiple different types of tangible and intangible objects in a data storage system, the tree structure comprising lightweight information for the GUI components, wherein the lightweight information includes a parent child list of object keys for enabling on-demand loading of child nodes as needed such that items kept in memory are limited to a lightweight object key and object information associated with objects currently displayed in the GUI; and updating at least one of the GUI components by exercising a model view controller architecture, wherein the GUI component is derived from a model chain comprising at least a first model and a second model, wherein the second model is chained to the first model and the second model adds value to the first model, wherein the first model and second model are derived from a same core dataset and modifying data in one model in the chain causes modifications to each subsequent model in the chain.