Preface

Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) and its Component Information Model (CIM) are coming of age. They appeared as a management tool for desktop computers in the late 1990s and have reached maturity at precisely the right moment: as the Simple Network Management Protocol ”SNMP ”has become inadequate to meet the rising demand for device and service management at higher levels of abstraction.

I intend this book to be used by those, perhaps with experience with the SNMP or the Telecommunications Management Network (TMN) protocols, who need to become familiar with WBEM/CIM.

I have included some high-level material, particularly in the early chapters, outlining some advantages of WBEM/CIM which would be of interest to managers or people working in marketing organisations, but my primary target readership is the working system architect and engineer who will be designing WBEM-based systems and writing the code for a management application.

Acknowledgements

I gratefully acknowledge the help given to me by many engineers in producing this book ”in particular Colin Ashford, John Bell, Sharon Chisholm, Tom Chmara, Eugene Deery, Randy Mortensen, Francis Ovenden, and Ying Zeng. They have contributed much during whiteboard discussions. I have enjoyed working with Ying on several CIM implementations , learning together as we examined code and took our first, faltering steps into provider writing. Francis, Randy, and Colin have provided direct constructive criticism of the text, ranging from correction of factual errors to broad hints about possible changes in style. Francis must have a special mention ”his meticulous reading of the manuscript pointed out technical oversights, unclear explanations and many, many typos. I am particularly grateful to him for this work.

I would also like to thank my wife, Alison, for her help in improving the readability of the book by the reduction (but, in spite of her efforts, not the elimination ) of jargon and the simplification of sentences. Her interest in WBEM and CIM is perhaps not as strong as mine and she has sometimes found wakefulness challenging during proof reading. On one version of the manuscript in a Frequently Asked Questions section, I found a penciled suggestion in her handwriting which proposed the additional question, "Why am I reading this?"

I have received numerous insights (and sources of Frequently Asked Questions) from members of the WBEM/CIM community who have unwittingly contributed to this book during face-to-face and e-mail discussions.

In various sections of the book, in particular in Chapter 6, I include examples taken from the Core and Common Models standardised by the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF). This material is reproduced with the permission of the DMTF. A full description of the licence under which this code may be reused is given in Appendix H.

There are two further teams that have unconsciously helped enormously in the preparation of this book: Donald E. Knuth and the team that created 2 _µ and the team that produced the dia drawing tool. I prepared the book using 2 _µ and the line drawings using dia. The ease of using these tools and the simplicity with which they interworked really made the book possible.

Chris Hobbs
Ottawa