Managing the communications resources of a computer network is critical to the successful operation of the network. A network management system is expected to manage a large collection of network nodes remotely. There is an obvious need for sophisticated network management application software in this process. Previous network management systems have been designed without particular regard for the application programmer's interface requirements. We propose that such software be written in a specialized Network Management Language (NML) that provides the programmer with high-level abstractions rather than low-level communication primitives. The NML would help reduce development costs, promote portability and accommodate multiple standards. We propose an NML which is an extension to the SQL database standard. An implementation of the NML within the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) systems management framework is discussed, and examples of its functionality and expressiveness are presented.