Techniques are described herein for using a management pack to define a structure of management packs. A management pack is business logic expressed in terms of an extensible language, such as extensible markup language (XML). Instances of entities that are described by a management pack are stored in an instance space that is defined by the management pack. An entity can be a computer, software program, employee, customer, management pack, management pack element, or anything else in the system that an administrator may wish to describe. A management pack that defines the structure of management packs is referred to as a “management pack management pack” (MPMP). Accordingly, management packs (including MPMPs) having a structure that is defined by a MPMP are stored in an instance space that is defined by the MPMP. The instance space that is defined by the MPMP is materialized in a database.