CMPI Providers in a nutshell
============================

Viktor Mihajlovski <mihajlov@de.ibm.com>
Nov 14th 2003

Pegasus 2.4 *NEWS*
------------------

The CMPI header files are being standardized and will be (or by the time you 
read this, already are) frozen.  However, the Pegasus 2.4 release is done 
earlier than the anticipated date for freezing the CMPI standard. 
Hence to not provide the developer with a possibly not-frozen interface, 
the CMPI header files are not shipped as part of the SDK (openwbem-devel RPM). 
But they are part of the CVS and source tarball. Please visit
http://cvs.opengroup.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/pegasus/src/Pegasus/Provider/CMPI/
to retrieve the frozen CMPI files.


Build CMPI from sources
-----------------------

The Common Manageability Programming Interface (CMPI) has been integrated into
Pegasus as a pluggable provider manager.

CMPI must be enabled during Pegasus build.
For CMPI enablement, set the following environment variables prior to make:

   PEGASUS_ENABLE_CMPI_PROVIDER_MANAGER=1


Using CMPI
----------
If you plan to write your own CMPI providers you are kindly referred to the
WBEMSource homepage where the draft specification document for CMPI resides.
You can find at http://www.wbemsource.org/doc.tpl?CALLER=index.tpl&gdid=3712 .
If you are looking for samples you should have a look at the SBLIM project.
The packages prefixed by the string sblim-cmpi contain CMPI providers for
various classes. See http://www-124.ibm.com/developerworks/projects/sblim .


Registering CMPI providers with Pegasus
---------------------------------------

Once you have a CMPI provider library you want to register it with Pegasus.
How? Well it's almost the same as for C++ providers. The only difference is
that the Provider.Interface property must be set to "CMPI".

Here's an excerpt from the SBLIM Linux Computer System provider registration

// ===================================================================
// 	Linux_ComputerSystem
// ===================================================================


instance of PG_ProviderModule
{
   Name = "OSBase_ComputerSystemProviderModule";
   //The library name on disk
   Location = "cmpiOSBase_ComputerSystemProvider";
   Vendor = "SBLIM";
   Version = "1.2.2";
   InterfaceType = "CMPI";
   InterfaceVersion = "0.86.0";
};

instance of PG_Provider
{
   //The provider module as defined in PG_ProviderModule
   ProviderModuleName = "OSBase_ComputerSystemProviderModule";
   // The provider name as referenced in the code
   Name = "OSBase_ComputerSystemProvider";
};

instance of PG_ProviderCapabilities
{
   //The provider module as defined in PG_ProviderModule
   ProviderModuleName = "OSBase_ComputerSystemProviderModule";
   //The provider name as defined in PG_Provider
   ProviderName = "OSBase_ComputerSystemProvider";
   CapabilityID = "1";
   //Name of the CIM class as defined in the mof
   ClassName = "Linux_ComputerSystem";
   Namespaces = {"root/cimv2"};
   ProviderType = { 2,5 }; // Instance, Method
   SupportedProperties = NULL; // All properties
   SupportedMethods = NULL; // All methods
};