The SMASH profiles build on other DMTF standards, including the Common Information Model (CIM), an object-oriented approach to modeling managed resources throughout the distributed computing environment. CIM Schemas define classes and associations among the classes in several key areas. CIM Schemas build around a core schema, including devices, applications, network, and the system itself. A CIM object manager brokers requests for data from any of the managed elements.

Clients can use the CIM-XML protocol for CIMOM access. Clients can also use Web Services for Management (WS-Management), a SOAP-based protocol for accessing CIM data. The Perl library discussed in this appendix is an implementation of WS-Management client artifacts (stubs, bindings) for connecting to a WS-Management server and obtaining CIM data.

For information about CIM, SMASH, and WS-Management, visit the dmtf.org Web site. See the

CIM SMASH/Server Management API Programming Guide

for information on CIM/SMASH and ESX/

.