Preface

Audience

This document is intended for use by software professionals who will design, implement and/or support clients or providers for HP WBEM Services for HP-UX.

Requisite Knowledge

Developers should be familiar with the following topics:

It is also essential that the provider developer be familiar with the elements of the operating system he or she is intending to instrument. That is, knowledge of system calls and their data structures, and how these will be modeled in CIM, is assumed.

Developers of CIM client applications should consult the documentation for the providers they plan to use. Appendix D, Example Provider Data Sheet, shows the kind of information typically provided.

Document Structure

The main body of this document is organized generally in the order in which the developer will undertake the various steps of the project. However, it will be useful to refer to the Examples included in the Software Development Kit as an aid to understanding the material in the text.

The programming interfaces (APIs) used by providers and clients are in the HP WBEM Services Software Developer’s Kit in the directory /opt/wbem/html.

This material describes how to use the interface functions, their parameters, exceptions thrown, and other related topics. Other detailed reference information can be found in the appendices. References to other sources of information will also be found throughout the document. A Appendix F “Glossary” is also available.

Navigation and Document Conventions

Typefont is used to help identify CIM element names. (Italic type is used for other things as well, including titles and for emphasis.)

Typefont is used to set off user-specified names, commands and filenames, and when introducing a new term.

The names of functions and methods will generally be indicated with parentheses, for example, getInstance(). The word “function” will refer to a C++ function, and the word “method” will refer to a CIM operation.