The building block of the Management Information Format
(MIF); describes a single characteristic of a manageable
product or component. A set of related attributes
constitutes a group.
Class string
A text string that identifies a group
outside the context of a particular
component declaration. Identical group
definitions will have identical class strings.
CMIP
Common Management Information Protocol,
an OSI-based network management
protocol standardized by ISO.
Command block
This term relates to the data block Management Interface
documented in the DMI 1.1 Specification.
NOTE:
The interfaces and structures defined by the DMI 1.1
specification are not supported on UnixWare.
Component
Any hardware, software or firmware element contained in
(or primarily attached to) a system.
Component instrumentation
A descriptive code or an ASCII file that defines
manageability data about components.
Instrumentation can cover everything from the computer's
temperature to configuration data to what versions of
software are installed. The data is specified in a standard
format (see Management Information Format).
Component Interface (CI)
The Component Interface (CI) is an
API that handles communication between
manageable elements and the DMI's Service
Layer.
Direct interface
The method by which a component instrumentation
informs the Service Provider that the instrumentation is
already running. Rather than starting the code to service
incoming requests, the Service Provider directs the requests
to the code already running.
DMI
The industry's first set of OS-independent and
protocol-independent application programming interfaces
(APIs) for managing PCs, servers
and other computer equipment. Developed by the Desktop
Management Task Force (DMTF), DMI
provides manageability through three layers of software:
Service Provider, Management Interface, and
Component Interface.
DMI2SNMP
The DMI to SNMP mapper
DMTF
Desktop Management Task Force. An industry consortium of more
than 120 vendors,
established in 1992 and committed to making PCs and
servers easier to understand, use, configure and manage.
SCO is a DMTF member and influences future directions
and developments. The DMTF developed the
Desktop Management Interface and it sponsors working
groups that standardize manageability requirements for
different classes of computer products.
Event
A runtime condition or change of state within a system.
Event Consumer
A software entity that has registered with the Service
Provider through the Management Interface with a non-null
indication callback procedure address, that is, it has registered
to receive events.
Event Generator
A hardware or software device that has undergone a change
in state or in which a certain condition of interest has
occurred. This change of state or event directly or indirectly
causes a new event to be processed by the Service Provider.
Event Reporter
The software entity that causes a new DMI
event to be processed by the Service Provider.
Group
A collection of attributes. A group with multiple instances
(rows) is called a table.
Indication
An unsolicited report resulting from an event, either from a
component instrumentation to the Service Provider, or
from the Service Provider to a Management Application.
ISO 8859-1
A character encoding standard defined by the International
Standards Organization (ISO). Commonly known as
extended ASCII or 8-bit ASCII.
Key
An identifier of a particular instance (row) of a table.
Keylist
A list of attribute IDs that is used as the
index into a table.
Localized string
A version of a display string that is a translation of the
original string into an equivalent string in the appropriate
local language.
Management Information Base
See MIB.
Management Information Format
See MIF.
Management application (MA)
Code that uses the MI to request management
activity from components.
MIB
Management Information Base (SNMP's equivalent of a MIF)
Management Interface (MI)
The Management Interface (MI) is an API
that provides the interface between the Service Layer and management
applications and allows these applications to access,
manage and control systems,
components and peripherals. The MI offers a consistent
interface for any management application to the various
mechanisms used to obtain information from products and
components within a system. It also
enables management applications to access information
from any system or product regardless of vendor.
MIF
Management Information Format. An ASCII text file that describes a product's manageable features
and attributes. DMI maintains this
information in a MIF database.
MIF database
The collection of MIF files, stored by the
Service Provider (in an implementation-specific format).
MIF file
A file that uses the MIF to describe a component.
OID
Object Identifier (SNMP identifies every object by a unique
OID )
ONC
Open Network Computing. In the context of this document, ONC
refers to the type of Remote Procedure Call (RPC) interfaces
in use.
Octet
An 8-bit quantity.
Request
A function call issued from the Management Application to accomplish a
specific task.
Response
The data and status returned from a request.
Row
An instance in a table.
Service Provider (SP)
The Service Provider (SP) is a program that resides in the
desktop system or server, and is responsible for all DMI
activities. 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.
SNMP
Simple Network Management Protocol. A widely used protocol for communicating
management information between the managed elements of
a network and a network manager. SNMP focuses
primarily on the network backbone; it is complemented by
standards such as the DMI, which extend network
manageability to the PC.
Table
A multidimensional group; a group with more than one
instance (row).
Unicode
A character-encoding standard. Unicode characters are two
octets each. When the first octet is zero, the second octet
maps to the characters in ISO 8859-1. Unicode is not
supported by the DMI implementation on UnixWare 7.