How to: Test an MI Provider Using Windows PowerShell

PowerShell includes a cmdlet - Get-CimClass - that makes easy work of exercising an MI provider's classes. This topic illustrates how to determine if a provider's class has been successfully registered on the local machine and how to test some of its intrinsic functions.

At this point, you should have a fully functional MI provider. If you created the provider, but did not add any logic, you won't be able to do much with it as most of the intrinsic functions - such as Enumerate, Get, Delete, Modify, and Create - post an MI_RESULT_NOT_SUPPORTED value. This essentially means that it's just not implemented yet.

1. On the target machine, open an elevated instance of PowerShell.

2. Enter the following command to use the Get-CimClass to list all the classes defined within the root/StandardCimv2/sample namespace. If a different namespace was used when the provider was registered, you'll need to modify the following accordingly.

   Get-CimClass -Namespace root/StandardCimv2/sample
   

3. To find a specific class - or group of classes - within a given namespace you would call the same Get-CimClass cmdlet and specify a search string for the ClassName parameter. For example, the sample MOF file introduced in the Generate an MI Provider from a MOF File topic defined a class called MSFT_WindowsProcess. To verify that this class was successfully registered, you can use the following command.

   Get-CimClass -Namespace root/StandardCimv2/sample -ClassName MSFT_WindowsProcess
   

4. Once you've determined that the provider has been registered successfully, you can start testing its intrinsic functions via the Get-CimClass cmdlet. As mentioned earlier, if you have not implemented the intrinsic functions in your provider, attempting to run the following commands will return MI_RESULT_NOT_SUPPORTED. To see an example of implementing the MSFT_WindowsProcess class, download the MI API Samples and look at the MSFT_WindowsProcess.c and WindowsProcess.c files.

   Note

   Some of the following commands are split across multiple lines for display purposes. You should enter each call on a single line.

    

   #Enumerate instances
   Get-CimInstance -ClassName MSFT_WindowsProcess -Namespace root/StandardCimv2/sample
   
   #Enumerate instances with keys only 
   Get-CimInstance -ClassName MSFT_WindowsProcess -Namespace root/StandardCimv2/sample -KeyOnly
   
   #Query Instances
   Get-CimInstance -query 'Select * from MSFT_WindowsProcess Where name like "svc%"' 
   -Namespace root/StandardCimv2/sample 
   
   #Query Instances with filter
   Get-CimInstance -ClassName MSFT_WindowsProcess -Namespace root/StandardCimv2/sample 
   -Filter 'name like "s%"' | Select Name
   
   #Get Instance
   $a,$b = Get-CimInstance -ClassName MSFT_WindowsProcess -Namespace root/StandardCimv2/sample
   Get-CimInstance -InputObject $a
   

Note

To learn how to write a Microsoft Visual C++ native MI client that will interface to an MI provider, see How to: Implement a Native MI Client. To learn how to write a Microsoft Visual C# managed MI client that interfaces to an MI provider, see How to: Implement a Managed MI Client.