Common Information Model
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The term Common Information Model may appear in various contexts;
Computing
In computing, the Common Information Model (CIM) is a standard defined by the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF).
The most important part of the CIM standard is the CIM Schema, a conceptual schema that defines how the managed elements in an IT environment are represented as a common set of objects and relationships between them. Another frequently used way to describe CIM is to say that it allows multiple parties to exchange management information about these managed elements. However, this falls short in expressing that CIM not only represents these managed elements and the management information, but also provides means to actively control and manage these elements. By using a common model of information, management software can be written once and work with many implementations of the common model without complex and costly conversion operations or loss of information. The managed elements represented in the CIM Schema include most of today's elements in an IT environment, for example Computer systems, Operating systems, Networks, Middleware, Services and Storage.
The CIM Schema defines a common basis for representing these managed elements. Since most managed elements have product and vendor specific behavior, the CIM Schema is extensible in order to allow the producers of these elements to represent their specific features seamlessly together with the CIM defined common base functionality.
Besides the CIM Schema itself, the CIM standard also defines the concepts and rules by which the CIM Schema is defined, including a language called Managed Object Format (MOF) in which the CIM Schema and any product specific extensions are defined. The concepts are based upon UML, so the CIM Schema is object-oriented: The managed elements are represented as CIM classes and any relationships between them are represented as CIM associations. Inheritance allows to represent common base elements and more specific derived elements. The MOF language and the concepts used to define the CIM Schema are described in the CIM Infrastructure Specification.
CIM is the basis for most of the other DMTF standards (e.g. WBEM or SMASH).
The first version of the CIM Schema was released by the DMTF on April 9, 1997. Version V2.11 was published on December 20, 2005.
Many vendors provide implementations of CIM in various forms. For example, the Windows Management Instrumentation API available in Microsoft Windows 2000 and higher uses the CIM Schema version 2 as its basis.
Electricity distribution
In electric power distribution, the Common Information Model (CIM), a standard designed by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), aims to allow transmission network operators to exchange information about the configuration and status of the transmission network under their control.
External links
Computing:
Electricity distribution: