11. The manufacturing process utility of claim 1 , wherein the data access server supports a messages information context for specifying a list of messages and associated statistics.
1. A manufacturing process utility, distributed across multiple networked nodes and facilitating performance of diagnostics on a data access server from a remote network location, the manufacturing process utility comprising: a diagnostic tool; a server agent, located on a remote processing node remote from the diagnostic tool, for: facilitating discovery of a remote data access server on the remote processing node by querying the remote processing node and returning a response identifying the remote data access server on the remote processing node, and facilitating establishing a connection between the diagnostic tool, residing on a node distinct from the remote processing node, and the remote data access server to provide diagnostic information regarding the remote data access server to the diagnostic tool; a diagnostic roots storage, maintained on the remote processing node, for storing diagnostic information regarding the data access server, the diagnostic information including both status information and diagnostic data schema information to guide presentation, by the diagnostic tool, of the status information for the data access server; wherein the diagnostic tool displays the status information in view of the diagnostic data schema information; and wherein the data access server provides diagnostic data associated with particular information contexts supported by the data access server.