Common Information Model

The Common Information Model (CIM) is a standard of the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) and is based on the object-oriented modeling approach. This standard provides an implementation-neutral schema to describe management information within a computing environment. For more information about CIM and DMTF, see http:// www.dmtf.org .

CIM is designed to model hardware and software elements. It provides a hierarchical set of core classes, which can be extended with application-specific classes.

The SLD is currently based on CIM model 2.9.

Each CIM class has one or more key properties, and a number of additional properties. Each class has an arbitrary number of instances, which contain the actual data. An instance can be uniquely identified by its set of key values.

Classes can be grouped in schemas. The SLD model provides three schemas: component data for installable software, landscape data for installed software and hardware, and name reservation data used in software development.

A special feature of CIM is the association between the classes. Associations are also classes that have two reference keys, each of which identifies exactly one CIM instance. An association therefore connects two instances, as shown in the figure below: