Overview – Dell Intel PRO Family of Adapters User Manual
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WMI: Intel® PRO Network Adapters WMI and CDM Providers
User Guide
Common Information Model (CIM Schema)
Overview
Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) is a Desktop Management Task Force (DMTF) initiative intended to provide
enterprise system managers with a standardized, cost-effective method for end station management. The WBEM initiative
encompasses a multitude of tasks, ranging from simple workstation configuration to full-scale enterprise management across
multiple platforms. Central to the initiative is the Common Information Model (CIM), an extensible data model for
representing objects that exist in typical management environments, and the Managed Object Format (MOF) language for
defining and storing modeled data.
Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is an implementation of the WBEM initiative for Microsoft* Windows* platforms.
WMI consists of three main components:
Core — These components are part of the Operating System. They are required for a WMI-enabled application to work,
and must be installed in order to use the SDK.
SDK — The SDK contains tools to browse the WMI schema, extend the schema, create providers, register and use the
WMI events. It also provides documentation useful for developing applications that will use the WMI. The SDK is
installed as part of the Microsoft Platform SDK installation process and is supported on Windows NT4 SP4 or SP5,
Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.
Tools — The Microsoft WMI Tools provide developers with the tools needed to build a whole new generation of
management applications and solutions. It is filled with documents and tools to guide you through the process of
accessing management data from WMI.
The WMI architecture consists of the following components:
Management applications
Managed objects
Providers
Management infrastructure (consisting of the Windows Management and Windows Management repository)
Windows Management API (which uses COM/DCOM to enable providers and management applications to communicate
with the Windows Management infrastructure.
Management applications process or display data from managed objects, which are logical or physical enterprise components.
These components are modeled using CIM and accessed by applications through Windows Management. Providers use the
Windows Management API to supply Windows Management with data from managed objects, to handle requests from
applications and to generate notification of events.
The management infrastructure consists of Windows Management (for handling the communication between management
applications and providers) and the Windows Management repository (for storing data). The Windows Management repository
holds static management data. Dynamic data is generated only on request from the providers. Data is placed in the repository
using either the MOF language compiler or the Windows Management API.
Applications and providers communicate through Windows Management using the Windows Management API, which supplies
services such as event notification and query processing.
The following diagram shows the interrelationship of the WMI architecture components:
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