HP WBEM Services for HP-UX and Linux System Administrator's Guide

How Resources are Represented (CIM Schema)
Appendix A 91
A How Resources are Represented
(CIM Schema)
The HP WBEM Services repository stores information about the
managed resources.
To register with HP WBEM Services, a provider must define its resource
by the classes and subclasses that define it. Then the provider must
describe the properties that it will expose, and the methods that it will
support.
The properties describe what a class is, the methods describe what it can
do. Properties are attributes or characteristics of the resource. Methods
are its actions, capabilities, or behaviors.
To made a request, the client must first identify, by its classes and
subclasses, the resource it wants to manage.
The resource descriptions are done using object-oriented modeling.
Object- oriented modeling represents real things in an abstract schema.
Objects are arranged from most general to most specific. Many attributes
of the more general parent are inherited by their more specific children.
Like object-oriented programming languages, the subclasses inherit the
definitions of properties and methods from the parent class. Unlike some
object-oriented programming, they do not inherit the implementations.
This section briefly defines basic concepts about object representation.
As system administrator, you do not need to understand this to install
HP WBEM Services or maintain it. However, it is the language that is
used to explain resources. These are the terms that are used to describe
what providers and clients do, and how resources can be managed.
For more information about object representation, visit the tutorial at:
http://www.dmtf.org/education/cimtutorial.php
The schema is the most general abstraction that represents real things
in the HP WBEM standard. A schema is a collection of classes. Each
class in a schema can only belong to that schema. Each class name must
be unique within a schema; a schema cannot have two classes with the
same name.