HP WBEM Services for HP-UX System Administrator Guide (5900-1624, April 2011)

http://www.dmtf.org/standards/cim.
For an overview of the data representation, see Appendix A (page 52).
CIM in Extensible Markup Language
The markup language for describing data on the web is Extensible Markup Language (XML). DMTF
defines a standard for representing the CIM elements and messages in XML, referred to as CIM-XML.
Since CIM-XML provides a standard way of describing data, any WBEM client can access CIM
data on any WBEM-enabled system. Requests are received from clients by HP WBEM Services as
CIM functions encoded in XML, which in turn, send responses to clients in CIM-XML.
For an overview of XML, see http://www.w3.org/XML.
For more information on CIM-XML, see DMTF Representation of CIM in XML available at:
http://www.dmtf.org/standards/published_documents.
CIM operations over HTTP
This section describes a mapping of CIM operations onto HTTP that enable implementations of
CIM to inter-operate in an open and standardized manner.
For more information about the HTTP server in HP WBEM Services, ports reserved for HP WBEM
Services, and other transport-related information, see Chapter 3 (page 33).
For more information on DMTF WBEM standards, see http://www.dmtf.org.
HP WBEM Services architecture
A typical IT environment consists of numerous servers and network resources and is rarely
homogenous. To manage this diverse environment, a host of management applications must be
available, such as HP Systems Insight Manager (HP SIM) or HP System Management Homepage
(HP SMH).
These management applications informs you about the health of your network and potential issues.
To gather information about any device in the network or information on any system, management
applications depend on HP WBEM Services.
HP WBEM Services can be considered as an information gateway. In any system, a number of
providers run. These providers are registered with HP WBEM Services.
When a management client sends a request, HP WBEM Services routes this request to the respective
provider. For example, if the request is for information on an operating system, HP WBEM Services
routes this request to the OS Provider (PG_OperatingSystemProvider). This provider gathers
information on the managed resource, in this case the operating system, and routes it back to HP
WBEM Services, which in turn, routes it back to the management client.
This is generally how HP WBEM Services functions in an IT environment. However, to process
client requests in a network, HP WBEM Services depends on the following components:
• CIM Server
The CIM Server receives requests from management clients. It then interacts with the respective
providers to receive information that is requested by the management clients. The CIM Server
receives information from the providers and sends it back to the management clients.
• CIM repository
The CIM repository maintains the data definitions of all the managed objects and the providers.
When a valid request for information is received, HP WBEM Services accesses the repository
and then looks up the managed resource. The resource owners register the providers with HP
WBEM Services. With this registration, managed resources inform HP WBEM Services of the
nature of information that their providers can give and how HP WBEM Services can invoke
the appropriate providers that are accessible as shared libraries.
6 Introduction to HP WBEM Services