IBM® Programming Assistant for CIM Client Development facilitates the development of CIM (Common Information Model) client applications and allows you to generate CIM client-side classes along with the predefined template. These newly created Java™ classes almost map the structure of CIM classes defined in the CIM server and wrap all the methods for CIM-related operations, such as enumerate instances, get property values, or invoke methods. The whole process helps save considerable time and expense in CIM client development.

This program also accelerates the development of CIM-based storage device management applications. The CIM client must be connected to one CIM server with appropriate parameters, and then all the CIM classes defined in the CIM Object Manager (CIMOM) can be mined out and subsequently transformed to CIM client-side classes by the predetermined template.

IBM Programming Assistant for CIM Client Development is built on the following features:

• Intuitiveness: The program acts as a standard CIM client, which is responsible for the communication with the CIM server. The program can get responses from CIMOM according to the standard CIM-XML over HTTP protocol.
• Flexibility: You can configure the conference data of a CIM server through the input parameters; achieve and maintain a client-side CIM class template; and address problems during the transformation procedure.
• Diagnosis: The program naturally diagnoses errors and assists with debugging. It can report many kinds of exceptions to help catch bugs early in the transformation procedure.

How does it work?

This Java-based application supplies one executable batch file for Windows®. Before you use this application, you must merely configure correctly the template parameters for both CIM class template and CIM agent connection information in the property file and make sure that the CIM server has been launched successfully.

You can specify which CIM classes will be mined from which CIM name spaces. The generated CIM client-side classes will be located in the Java directory, and the event log for this application will also be placed under the base directory.

Hui Yang is a staff software engineer at the IBM China Systems & Technology Laboratories in Shanghai. He is currently working on the Platform Configuration Library project, which supplies CIM-related back-end support for the IBM Director and Storage Configuration Manager projects. Mr. Yang is also interested in CIM technology and open-source projects.