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What is CIM Schema Converter?
The Common Information Model (CIM) defines an industry standard that is being developed by consortia members of the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF). It provides a common definition of management information for systems, networks, applications, and services; and it allows for vendor extensions.
CIM is composed of a specification and a schema. The specification defines the details for integration with other management models, and the schema provides the actual model descriptions. These schemas are written by the DMTF in a language called Managed Object Format (MOF).
The schema works well for CIM providers implemented for OpenPegasus, an open-source implementation of the DMTF CIM and WBEM standards. This implemented module is called a CIM Object Manager (CIMOM). It is designed to be portable and highly modular and runs today on most versions of UNIX®, Linux®, OpenVMS, and Microsoft Windows®. Other organizations can implement CIMOM, such as Sun's Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM), IBM® Small FootPrint CIM Broker (SFCB),and Windows Management Instrumentation Adapter (WMI+A). In this case, the CIM Provider developer must develop different providers for different CIMOMs. To reduce the overhead required for developing and maintaining different versions of CIM Provider for various CIMOMs, a Common Manageability Programming Interface (CMPI) standard evolved. TheCMPI standard provides a common interface for developing a CIM provider. Consequently, a CIM provider implemented using this interface works with any CIMOM supporting CMPI.
Currently, an MOF schema used for a CIM provider implementation for WMI+A requires manual changes, which can be time consuming and prone to errors. CIM Schema Converter uses the downloaded CIM schema as input for generating a schema that is compatible with WMI+A. This automation reduces processing time and minimizes errors.
How does it work?
CIM Schema Converter works with Java™ 1.5 or above. It uses Java APIs for string manipulations and regular expressions. This tool works for all the schema versions released by the DMTF (2.11 to 2.18).
Implementation details are as follows:
- A folder containing MOF files is taken as input from the user either as a command line argument or by using a file chooser. A single file can also be selected.
- Each MOF file in the folders is parsed one line at a time.
- Each line is stored in a temporary string and required changes are made to it.
- A new file is created at the location specified by the user (if no output path is selected, then the default path (/DMTFWIN) is used).
CIM Schema Converter provides both Graphical User Interface (GUI) based and Command Line Interface (CLI) support.
The tool can be used in the following way:
- Download the CIM schema from the DMTF Web site.
- Give the CIM schema as input to this tool and select a location where you want to save the converted MOF files, which will be compatible with WMI+A.
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