The DMI 2.0 structure

DMI defines a set of properties that can be used within a single system.

The DMI property set consists of:

• A format for describing management information

• A service provider that serves as an abstraction layer between components and management applications

• Two sets of APIs, one for service providers and components to interact, and the other for service providers and management applications to interact

• A set of services for facilitating remote communication

• The DMI Service Provider (DMI-SP) is a program that resides in the desktop system or server. This layer collects management information from products (whether system hardware, peripherals or software), stores that information in the DMI's database and passes it to management applications as requested.

  The DMI-SP must provide a ``Management Interface'' (MI) for management applications, and may optionally provide a ``Component Interface'' (CI) for manageable (instrumented) components.

• The Management Interface (MI) is an API that provides the interface between the Service Layer and management applications. The MI offers a consistent interface for any management application to the various mechanisms that are used to obtain information from components within a desktop system or server.

• The Component Interface (CI) is an API that handles communication between manageable components and the DMI's Service Layer. The CI gives all hardware or software components a common method for describing their management attributes.

• The ``management applications'' are programs for interrogating, changing, controlling, tracking and listing the components of a desktop or network server system.

• ``Components'' are hardware or software products that reside within, or that are attached externally to, a desktop computer or server. Components that can be instrumented include word processors, spreadsheets, motherboards, operating systems, hard disks, CD-ROMs, graphics cards, printers, sound cards, and modems. DMI-enabled components can be shipped with the system or can be added later.

• The remoteable interface layer of the DMI 2.0 is designed to provide remote access to DMI functionality.

  Remoteable management applications interact with the DMI-SP through the RPC mechanisms supported by the operating environment. Remoteable management applications are implemented with RPC support layer support, so that they can open remote sessions to any DMI-SP available across the network, and use the procedural MI of the connected DMI-SP to manage its components; for more information, see ``Remoteable DMI service users''.