The DMI is a local interface to be used within a single system. It provides a means by
which component instrumentation developed by multiple vendors can interplay within a
single system to uniformly provide management information. The Desktop Management
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The Service Layer (SL), a local program that collects information from
components, manages that information through the MIF database, and passes
the information to management applications as requested. It controls
communication between itself and management applications by means of the
Management Interface (MI), and between itself and manageable products by
means of the Component Interface (CI). See the
DMI Specification
for detailed
information.
The MIF database, which contains the information about the products installed
on or attached to the system. The Service Layer manages the information in the
database. The information comes from MIF files provided with each manageable
product. See the
DMI Specification
for detailed information.
Management applications, remote or local programs for interrogating, changing,
controlling, tracking, and listing the elements of a desktop system. A
management application can be a graphical user interface program, a network
management agent, an installer program, a diagnostics program, or a remote
procedure call. See the
DMI Specification
for detailed information.
Manageable products, also called
components,
are hardware, software, or
peripherals that occupy or are attached to a desktop computer, such as hard
disks, word processors, CD-ROMs, printers, motherboards, operating systems,
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