Method and system for integrating non-compliant providers of dynamic services into a resource management infrastructure
View Patent ↗A method for use in a resource management infrastructure conforming to the WMI architecture are proposed. The WMI architecture includes a framework, known as CIM Object Manager (or CIMOM), which exploits WMI providers of dynamic services for the managed objects; in the WMI architecture, the CIM providers must be implemented as Common Object Model (COM) objects and must comply with a specific WMI provider interface (named “IWbemServices”). The invention discloses a method for integrating non-compliant providers, for example written in the Java language, into the WMI infrastructure. For this purpose, a bridge provider is associated with each managed object that is supported by the Java providers. The bridge provider identifies the Java provider that must be invoked to fulfill a particular request (based on a specific CIM qualifier); the parameters of the request are converted into Java types, and a corresponding method is called on an intermediate Java object. The intermediate Java object then routes the request to the appropriate Java provider.
1. In a resource management infrastructure including a framework for allowing management applications to access managed objects, the framework supporting compliant providers of dynamic services for the managed objects running in a first operative environment, a method of integrating a plurality of non-compliant providers of dynamic services for a set of the managed objects, the non-compliant providers running in a second operative environment that is not supported by the framework, wherein the method includes the steps of:
the framework requesting a first dynamic service for a selected managed object of the set of the managed objects from a compliant provider associated with the selected managed object, the compliant provider being common to all the managed objects of the set of the managed objects;
the compliant provider converting at least one first parameter received from the framework with the request of the first service into at least one second parameter supported by the second operative environment;
the compliant provider identifying a non-compliant provider associated with the selected managed object;
the compliant provider verifying whether the second operative environment has been created before requesting a second dynamic service from the intermediate entity;
the compliant provider creating the second operative environment if the result of the verification is negative;
the compliant provider requesting the second dynamic service for the selected managed object, corresponding to the first dynamic service, from an intermediate entity running in the second operative environment and passing an indication of the non-compliant provider;
the compliant provider passing the at least one second parameter to the intermediate entity with the request of the second dynamic service;
the intermediate entity routing the request of the second dynamic service to the non-compliant provider, the intermediate entity passing the at least one second parameter to the non-compliant provider with the request of the second dynamic service;
the non-compliant provider returning a result of the second dynamic service to the intermediate entity; the intermediate entity returning the result of the second dynamic service to the compliant provider;
the compliant provider constructing a result of the first dynamic service according to the result of the second dynamic service;
the compliant provider returning the result of the first dynamic service to the framework; and
the compliant provider destroying the second operative environment after a predetermined time-out from a last use thereof.
2. The method according to claim 1 , further including the steps under the control of the intermediate entity of:
verifying whether each non-compliant provider has been created before requesting the second dynamic service to the non-compliant provider;
creating the non-compliant provider if the result of the verification is negative; and
destroying the non-compliant provider after a predetermined further time-out from a last use thereof.
3. The method according to claim 2 , further including, under the control of the intermediate entity:
when requesting the second dynamic service to each non-compliant provider, removing a possible record including an identifier of the non-compliant provider from a FIFO queue and inserting a new record into the FIFO queue including the identifier of the non-compliant provider together with an expiration time thereof calculated to add further time-out to a current time;
setting a signaling time of a timer to the expiration time of a first record to be extracted from the FIFO queue;
in response to the timer reaching the signaling time, destroying the non-compliant provider identified in the first record of the FIFO queue;
extracting the first record from the FIFO queue; and
setting the signaling time of the timer to the expiration time of the new first record to be extracted from the FIFO queue.