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CIM Tutorial > CIM > Overview
The CIM is a hierarchical, object oriented architecture that makes it comparatively straightforward to track and depict the often complex interdependencies and associations among different managed objects. Such interdependencies may include those between logical network connections and underlying physical devices, or those of an e-commerce transaction and the web and database servers on which it depends. The CIM is an information model, a conceptual view of the managed environment, that attempts to unify and extend the existing instrumentation and management standards (SNMP, DMI, CMIP, etc.) using object-oriented constructs and design. The CIM does not require any particular instrumentation or repository format. It is only an information model – unifying the data, using an object-oriented format, made available from any number of sources. The CIM is comprised of a specification and a schema. The CIM Specification defines the details for integration with other management models, while the CIM Schema provides the actual model descriptions. The CIM Schema captures notions that are applicable to all common areas of management, independent of implementations. This section will describe the CIM Specification, including the meta schema and the meta schema elements, the Managed Object Format (MOF) and how the Unified Modeling Language (UML) is used to diagram CIM models. The CIM Schema section will describe the schema, including a description of the core and common models.
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