1.1 Glossary

This document uses the following terms:

action URI: A URI that identifies which operation or method needs to be applied to a resource.

CIM class: A CIM object that represents a CIM class definition as a CIM object. It is the template representing a manageable entity with a set of properties and methods.

CIM method: An operation describing the behavior of a CIM class or a CIM instance. It is generally an action that can be performed against the manageable entity made up of a CIM class.

CIM namespace: A logical grouping of a set of CIM classes designed for the same purpose or sharing a common management objective within the database used to store all CIM class definitions.

CIM object: Refers to a CIM class or a CIM instance.

client: The client application using the WS-Management Protocol to access the management service, on the local or a remote machine.

Common Information Model (CIM): The Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) model that describes how to represent real-world computer and network objects. CIM uses an object-oriented paradigm, where managed objects are modeled using the concepts of classes and instances. See [DMTF-DSP0004].

Common Information Model (CIM) class: A collection of Common Information Model (CIM) instances that support the same type, that is, the same CIM properties and CIM methods, as specified in [DMTF-DSP0004].

Common Information Model (CIM) instance: Provides values for the CIM properties associated with the CIM instance's defining CIM class. A CIM instance does not carry values for any other CIM properties or CIM methods that are not defined in (or inherited by) its defining CIM class. For more information, see [DMTF-DSP0004].

Common Information Model (CIM) namespace: A logical grouping of a set of Common Information Model (CIM) classes designed for the same purpose or sharing a common management objective within the database used to store all CIM class definitions. This is a term mostly referenced in the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) implementation.

Common Information Model (CIM) object: An object that represents a Common Information Model (CIM) object. This can be either a CIM class or a CIM instance of a CIM class.

Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF): An industry organization that develops management standards and integration technology for enterprise and Internet environments.

endpoint reference (EPR): A combination of WS-Addressing ([WSAddressing]) and WS-Management–addressing elements that together describe an address for a resource in the SOAP message header.

globally unique identifier (GUID): A term used interchangeably with universally unique identifier (UUID) in Microsoft protocol technical documents (TDs). Interchanging the usage of these terms does not imply or require a specific algorithm or mechanism to generate the value. Specifically, the use of this term does not imply or require that the algorithms described in [RFC4122] or [C706] have to be used for generating the GUID. See also universally unique identifier (UUID).

manageable entity: A Common Information Model (CIM) instance that represents a manageable component of an operating system.

Managed Object Format (MOF): A textual encoding for Common Information Model (CIM) objects, this representation is not used within protocol operations defined in [MS-WMI]. MOF is defined in [DMTF-DSP0004] section 3. The MOF text encoding is only used for illustrative purposes. The binary encoding can be translated to and from the MOF format.

property: A name/value pair that describes a unit of data for a class. Property values have to have a valid Managed Object Format (MOF) data type.

resource: An endpoint that represents a distinct type of management operation or value. A client exposes one or more resources and some resources can have more than one instance. For example, the Win32_LogicalDisk class represents a resource and Win32_LogicalDisk="C:\" is a specific instance of the resource.

resource URI: The Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) that is used to identify a specific type of resource, such as disks or processes, on a network ([DMTF-DSP0226] section 5.1.2.1).

selector: A name/value pair that represents a particular instance of a resource; essentially a filter or "key" that identifies the desired instance of the resource.

service: An application that provides management services to clients through the WS-Management Protocol and other web services.

SOAP: A lightweight protocol for exchanging structured information in a decentralized, distributed environment. SOAP uses XML technologies to define an extensible messaging framework, which provides a message construct that can be exchanged over a variety of underlying protocols. The framework has been designed to be independent of any particular programming model and other implementation-specific semantics. SOAP 1.2 supersedes SOAP 1.1. See [SOAP1.2-1/2003].

Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): A string that identifies a resource. The URI is an addressing mechanism defined in Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax [RFC3986].

Web Services Description Language (WSDL): An XML format for describing network services as a set of endpoints that operate on messages that contain either document-oriented or procedure-oriented information. The operations and messages are described abstractly and are bound to a concrete network protocol and message format in order to define an endpoint. Related concrete endpoints are combined into abstract endpoints, which describe a network service. WSDL is extensible, which allows the description of endpoints and their messages regardless of the message formats or network protocols that are used.

WS-Management: A public standard SOAP-based protocol for sharing management data among all operating systems, computers, and devices.

XML schema definition (XSD): The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standard language that is used in defining XML schemas. Schemas are useful for enforcing structure and constraining the types of data that can be used validly within other XML documents. XML schema definition refers to the fully specified and currently recommended standard for use in authoring XML schemas.

MAY, SHOULD, MUST, SHOULD NOT, MUST NOT: These terms (in all caps) are used as defined in [RFC2119]. All statements of optional behavior use either MAY, SHOULD, or SHOULD NOT.