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

Schema Design and Implementation
Chapter 330
logical representation. The schema contains three kinds of information:
• a definition of the details of each entity
• the operations the entity supports
• how classes of these entities are related to one another on a managed
system
Since real-world entities have attributes (properties) about themselves
and actions (methods) they can perform, these are also aspects of the
design of a schema.
A further aspect to consider is that some entities are actually specialized
types of other entities.
A well-understood schema encompassing all these considerations is
critical for interoperable platform-independent WBEM-based
management application interaction with managed resources.
To ensure interoperability between clients and providers, it is vital that
developers base their designs on standardized schemas. While a given
management application and associated managed resource provider(s)
could decide to standardize on some private schema, this is very likely to
result in redundant information being provided and an inability for
clients and providers to share information in an interoperable manner.
As noted in the introduction of this document, the DMTF has defined the
Common Information Model (CIM), a common data model of an
implementation-neutral schema for describing overall management
information in a network/enterprise environment. Using this common
CIM schema enables general-purpose management clients to use a
common representation of managed objects, even without prior
knowledge of the providers implementing the schema. Developing with
this common CIM schema lets providers add application-specific
value-added functions while still supporting general-purpose clients. For
example, the provider could implement an OS-specific function, while
also exposing a CIM-compliant view of general OS capabilities.