HP WBEM Services Software Developer's Kit for HP-UX Provider and Client Developer's Guide A.01

Introduction to WBEM, CIM, CIM Server, and Providers
Providers
Chapter 1 19
Providers
Providers get information about the system and fulfill other requests on
behalf of client applications. Clients deal with instances of the classes of
objects defined by CIM. An instance is a representation of a single
manageable entity (such as a disk); it contains data obtained from the
system by a provider. Providers perform the conversion between CIM
and the platform's commands, services and data formats. CIM is the
object-based representation that a WBEM client application
understands.
The interface between the server/CIM Server infrastructure and the
plug-in providers is called the Provider Application Programming
Interface (API). The CIM Server calls a function of the Provider API
when it needs to have a provider perform an operation requested by a
client. The provider API functions are documented in the HP WBEM
Services SDK in the /opt/wbem/html directory. Information and
guidelines for designing and implementing a provider are described in
the section on Provider Implementation.
Providers are written in C++ and are compiled and linked to create a
shared library. A single shared library may contain one or more
providers.
The following diagram shows the relationship among clients, the CIM
Server, providers, and the underlying system features.