A technique tests whether an integrated computing system having server, network and storage components complies with a configuration benchmark expressed as rules in first markup-language statements such as XML. The rules are parsed to obtain test definition identifiers identifying test definitions in a second set of markup-language statements, each test definition including a test value and an attribute identifier of system component attribute. A management database is organized as an integrated object model of all system components. An interpreter invoked with the test definition identifier from each rule process each test definition to (a) access the management database using the attribute identifier obtain the actual value for the corresponding attribute, and (b) compare the actual value to the test value of the test definition to generate a comparison result value that can be stored or communicated as a compliance indicator to a human or machine user.