Windows Management Instrumentation - Features

Features

For someone willing to develop one or many WMI providers, WMI offers many features out of the box. Here are the most important advantages:

1. Automation interfaces: Because WMI comes with a set of automation interfaces ready to use, all management features supported by a WMI provider and its set of classes get the scripting support for free out-of-the box. Beyond the WMI class design and the provider development, the Microsoft development and test teams are not required to create, validate and test a scripting model as it is already available from WMI.
2. .NET Management interfaces: Because the System.Management namespace relies on the existing COM/DCOM plumbing, the created WMI provider and its set of WMI classes becomes automatically available to all .NET applications independently of the language used (e.g. C#, VB.NET). Beyond the WMI class design and the provider development, like for scripting, the Microsoft development and test teams are not required to create, validate and test new assemblies to support a new namespace in the .NET Framework as this support is already available from WMI for free.
3. C/C++ COM/DCOM programming interfaces: Like most components in Windows, COM/DCOM programmers can leverage the features of the provider they develop at the COM/DCOM interfaces level. Like in previous environments (scripting and .NET Framework), a COM/DCOM consumer just needs to interact with the standard set of WMI COM interfaces to leverage the WMI provider capabilities and its set of supported WMI classes. To make all management information available from the native APIs, the WMI provider developer just needs to interact with a set of pre-defined WMI COM interfaces. This will make the management information available at the WMI COM level automatically. Moreover, the scripting COM interface object model is very similar to the COM/DCOM interface object model, which makes it easy for developers to be familiar with the scripting experience.
4. Remoting capabilities over DCOM and SOAP: More than simply offering local COM capabilities, as management is all about remoting, WMI offers the DCOM transport. In addition, SOAP transport will be available in Windows Server 2003 R2 through the WS-Management initiative led by Microsoft, Intel, Sun Microsystems and Dell. This initiative allows to run any scripts remotely or to consume WMI data through a specific set of interfaces handling SOAP requests/responses. The advantage for the WMI provider developer is that when he exposes all his features through WMI, Windows Remote Management/WS-Management can in turn consume that information as well (embedded objects in WMI instances are not supported in Windows Server 2003 R2. It is however a target for Vista). All the layering to WS-Management and the mapping of the CIM data model to SOAP comes for free out of the WMI/WS-Management solution. In the event DCOM must be used, implementing DCOM requires the presence of a proxy DLL deployed on each client machine. As WMI is available in the Windows operating system since Windows 2000, these issues are eliminated.
5. Support for Queries: WMI offers support for WQL queries out of the box. This means that if a provider is not designed to support queries, WMI supports it by using an enumeration technique out of the provider.
6. Eventing capabilities: WMI offers the capability to notify a subscriber for any event it is interested in. WMI uses the WMI Query Language (WQL) to submit WQL event queries and defines the type of events to be returned. The eventing mechanism, with all related callbacks, is part of the WMI COM/DCOM and automation interfaces. Anyone writing a WMI provider can have the benefit of this functionality at no cost for his customers. It will be up to the consumer to decide how it wants to consume the management information exposed by the WMI provider and its related set of WMI classes.
7. Code template generator: To speed up the process of writing a WMI provider including all COM/DCOM interfaces and related definitions, the WMI team developed the WMI ATL Wizard to generate the code template implementing a provider. The code generated is based on the WMI class model initially designed by the developer. The WMI provider developer will be able to interface the pre-defined COM/DCOM interfaces for the WMI provider with its set of native APIs retrieving the management information to expose. The exercise consists in filling the “gaps” in the provider code to create the desired interfacing logic.
8. Predictability: Predictability is an important concern for IT professionals because it defines the capability of someone having an experience with a set of interfaces managing a Windows component to apply this knowledge right away, intuitively, to any other manageable Windows component without having relearn everything from ground up. Predictability for a customer is a real gain as it increases the Return of Investment (ROI). A person facing such a situation simply expects things to work the same way based on his previous experience. The constant increase of COM programming/scriptable interfaces has a huge impact on the predictability, as this makes it difficult for customers to automate, manage Windows and leverage their existing knowledge. WMI with CIM address this problem by always exposing the same programming object model (COM/DCOM, Automation, .NET) whatever the manageable entity is.
9. Protect existing customer investments: Protecting customers and partners investment motivates customers to invest in technologies. As Microsoft did invest a lot these past years in writing WMI providers, customers and partners invested in tools leveraging the WMI capabilities of Windows. Therefore, they naturally continue to exploit these capabilities instead of having to use a new set of specific interfaces for each Windows manageable component. A specific set of interfaces means having a specific set of agents or in-house developed software based on a new model or set of interfaces especially dedicated to a component or technology. By leveraging the capabilities of WMI today, customers and partners can leverage the work investment made in the past while minimizing their costs in developments, learning curves and new discoveries. This will also have a great impact on the stability and reliability of their infrastructure as they continue to leverage an existing implementation with an improved technology.
10. Provide a logical and unified administration model: As briefly described before in the introduction, this model is based on an industry standard called CIM defined by the DMTF (http://www.dmtf.org). The CIM class-based schema is defined by a consortium of constructors and software developers that meets the requirements of the industry. This implies that not only Microsoft leverages the WMI capabilities, but also any other third party constructors or developers write their own code to fit into the model. For instance, Intel is doing this for some their network driver adapters and software. HP is leveraging existing WMI providers and implementing their own WMI providers in their HP Open View Enterprise Management software. IBM consumes WMI from the Tivoli management suite, MOM and SMS are also consuming and providing WMI information. Lastly, Windows XP SP2 leverages WMI to get information status from anti-virus software and firewalls.