1. A method in a data processing system for managing a data center, the method comprising: receiving a user input to invoke an operation on a resource in the data center, wherein the user input identifies the operation and a Web service for performing the operation, wherein the user input includes the operation name, operation parameters, and a Web service description language file location that identifies a Web service description language file, wherein the Web service description language file defines a set of operations and a set of messages, wherein each message is defined as an input or an output of at least one operation in the set of operations, wherein the Web service description file further defines common resource properties and server resource properties, wherein the common resource properties are used by all resources in the data center, and wherein the server resource properties are specific to server resources; and initiating the operation on the resource in the data center using the Web service identified in the user input.