CIM provides a common definition of management information for systems, networks, applications and services, and allows for vendor extensions. CIM's common definitions enable vendors to exchange semantically rich management information between systems throughout the network.
CIM is composed of a Specification and a Schema. The Schema provides the actual model descriptions, while the Specification defines the details for integration with other management models.
The CIM release simultaneously provides the public with both an "Experimental" and a "Final" version of the schema. This provides DMTF members and end users with early access to experimental parts of the models. In addition, new versions of CIM are now released more frequently on a regularly scheduled basis allowing users greater access and the ability to plan accordingly.
As part of the CIM release, a number of enhancements and additions are introduced throughout the Schema, including ongoing improvements to support product and alliance partners and to support DMTF Profiles and Management Initiatives. Examples include updates to BIOS, printers, standard messages, operating system state, modern power management paradigms, virtualization and security. In addition, it should be noted that the CIM Schema is built automatically for the DMTF. All of the change requests for the current CIM release were applied programmatically, instead of by hand.
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