Understanding WMI Scripting
This resource explains to Windows and Exchange Administrators how they can use the Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) scriptable technology available in these products to ease their day-to-day management tasks.
TABLE OF CONTENTS Understanding WMI Scripting
Chapter 2: Starting with WMI
2.1 Objective
After reviewing WSH, we can start the exploration of Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). Of course, before scripting on top of WMI, we must learn what WMI is. This implies a theoretical approach to the technology. Like any technology, WMI is a kind of "computing environment" in which you must be able to navigate. It is important to understand how WMI is implemented under Windows and its key components. WMI refers to some standards defined by a committee called the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF). We will see what this committee is and the initiatives behind it. Of course, the purpose of this chapter is not to delve into the discovery of the DMTF standards, but to provide the necessary background information to understand WMI. Throughout this chapter, we discover the WMI architecture and review its concepts and terms. We explore the WMI database and examine the definition of its elements and how they are related. As we progress through the chapter, we build an alerting system that helps to illustrate the various concepts as they are explained.
2.2 What is the DMTF?
To understand Windows Management Instrumentation, we must first look at the DMTF and its relation to Web-based Enterprise Management (WBEM) and WMI. The DMTF was founded in 1992 as the Desktop Management Task Force, and it focused on standards for managing desktop PCs. With the evolution of the industry, the management of several single entities at the enterprise level was challenging. To reflect this evolution, the...
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