Various systems, methods, and computer program products are disclosed for performing configuration management functionality on hierarchically-organized unstructured data using associative templates. Such methods, computer program products, and computer systems include identifying a node in the associative template and setting a configuration parameter to a parameter value, based on a template association. The node in the associative template is a node in a hierarchy of an associative template. The identifying indicates a template association between the node in the associative template and a node in a hierarchy of hierarchically-organized unstructured data (HOUD). The parameter value is maintained in the node in the associative template, and the node comprises the configuration parameter.