Common Information Model (computing)
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The Common Information Model (CIM) is a computer industry standard for describing information-systems entities such as networks, devices, and applications in order to allow consistent management of these entities across a network independent of the entity's manufacturer or provider. Since CIM is based on an object oriented paradigm, these entities are described as objects. CIM is part of the WBEM (Web-based Enterprise Management) initiative, which is being defined by major network vendors and managed by the DMTF (Distributed Management Task Force). The CIM is composed of two parts: The Specification, which describes the language, naming, and the mapping to other management models; and the Schema, which is a formal definition of the model.
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[edit] Schema
The Schema, is a conceptual schema that defines how the managed elements in an IT environment are represented as a common set of objects and relationships between them. Another frequently used way to describe CIM is to say that it allows multiple parties to exchange management information about these managed elements. However, this falls short in expressing that CIM not only represents these managed elements and the management information, but also provides means to actively control and manage these elements. By using a common model of information, management software can be written once and work with many implementations of the common model without complex and costly conversion operations or loss of information. The managed elements represented in the CIM Schema include most of today's elements in an IT environment, for example Computer systems, Operating systems, Networks, Middleware, Services and Storage.
The CIM Schema defines a common basis for representing these managed elements. Since most managed elements have product and vendor specific behavior, the CIM Schema is extensible in order to allow the producers of these elements to represent their specific features seamlessly together with the CIM defined common base functionality.
[edit] Specification
The Specification defines the concepts and rules by which the CIM Schema is defined, including a language called Managed Object Format (MOF) in which the CIM Schema and any product specific extensions are defined. The concepts are based upon UML, so the CIM Schema is object-oriented: The managed elements are represented as CIM classes and any relationships between them are represented as CIM associations. Inheritance allows to represent common base elements and more specific derived elements.
[edit] Additional Information
CIM is the basis for most of the other DMTF standards (e.g. WBEM or SMASH).
The first version of the CIM Schema was released by the DMTF on April 9, 1997. Version V2.13.1 was published on 16 November 2006.
Many vendors provide implementations of CIM in various forms. For example, the Windows Management Instrumentation API available in Microsoft Windows 2000 and higher uses the CIM Schema version 2 as its basis.
