Title: Building static providers for OpenPegasus embedded systems
Date: 1 November 2007
Status: Draft
Reference: pegasus PEP 309

Overview of the Static Provider Functionality

    For embedded system implementations of OpenPegasus, the dynamic shared
    library model for provider implementation sometimes does not work
    (see PEP 305 for background).  Therefore, a static model for
    providers has been implemented whereby the providers become part
    of the server image, directly linked into the server.

    Note that this feature is based on the existing provider linking
    mechanism for control providers in Pegasus but with cleaner
    interfaces.

Building Static Providers

    NOTE: There is an example of the building of providers in the
    directory pegauss/vxworks.providers with two simple sample
    providers.

    Building providers is very similar to the standard provider build
    except that only the libraries are build, not shared libraries.

    Note that the interfaces are exactly the same between the static
    providers and normal pegasus providers and that exactly the same
    provider interface functionality is supported.

    There is an example of building static providers in the directory

        pegaus/vxworks/providers

Installing Static Providers

    The installation/registration process for static providers is
    completely different than for dynamic providers. Whereas dynamic
    providers are installed with a registration process that uses
    instances of provider classes to define the provider and its
    capabilities, the static provider is installed as part of the
    creation of the server image (linked) and registered as part of
    the startup process for the OpenPegasus server.

    Once a provider has been coded and compiled it is built into the
    startup OpenPegasus provider registration by defining the provider
    information in a table that is defined in the server startup code.

    NOTE: For the moment, PEP 309 provides the definition of how to
    build this table.

    There is an example of this table defined in the file 

        pegasus/vxworks/cimserver/cimserver.cpp