2.1.5 Protocol Communications

The flow of communication between the CIM client role and the CIM server role can be carried out over a network connection by using any one of the member protocols (WMI, WSMAN, and WSMV).

The WM applications are implemented to support one or more of the use cases that are described in section 2.5. All of these tasks are accomplished through the retrieval and modification of data that is to be managed. This data, which is represented by using the CIM model, is made available to the applications through the WM protocols.

On the remote end, this data is exposed to the WM protocols as a set of managed objects. When a WM application interacts with the WM protocols, it requests access to or a specific modification of these managed objects. The WM protocols accept this request, retrieve or modify the appropriate data in the managed objects, and then return the appropriate data to the application in response.

For the data that CIMOM does not expose, the REST server role processes REST operations with inputs from the REST client role.

For the resources that the command execution engine manages, the Command invocation client role issues the inputs of pipeline commands that the Command invocation server role interprets.

The specific details for the type and format of requests that the applications send, and the type and format of the responses back to the applications, depend on the individual protocol that carries out the action. Moreover, the actual capabilities of the implementation could differ based on the protocol that is being used.

The following diagram shows the communication paths among the WM system components.

WM protocol communications

Figure 3: WM protocol communications

The following protocol specifications define requests and responses for each WM protocol:

  • For details about requests and responses that the Windows Management Instrumentation Remote Protocol uses, see [MS-WMI].

  • For details about requests and responses that the Web Services Management Protocol Extensions for Windows Server 2003 operating system uses, see [MS-WSMAN].

  • For details about requests and responses that the Web Services Management Protocol Extensions for Windows Vista operating system uses, see [MS-WSMV].

  • For details about requests and responses that the PowerShell Remoting Protocol uses, see [MS-PSRP].