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Best Practices for MI Provider and Client Development

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This topic explains some of the best practices for developing Windows Management Infrastructure (MI) providers and clients.

CIM Classes and Namespaces

  • Interop namespace—It is strongly recommended that you not update or delete CIM classes in the root/interop namespace unless Microsoft updates them.

Providers

  • Implementing a Custom OperationOption— It is recommended that you not use UINT16 or UINT32 as a data type for a custom Operation Option. While these data types are supported, they are converted to SINT32 on the provider. Therefore, you should use the SINT32 data type instead.

  • Localizing MOF Files— When localizing providers for PowerShell, it is recommended that you do not localize elements that users will use on which to base PowerShell script decisions. However, the Convert-MofToProvider tool always sets the value/valuemap to Translatable, which implies that all elements are localized. To avoid this, you can do one of two things:

    • Choose not to localize the MOF. If you do not specify the localization flag, Convert-MofToProvider will not generate the references.
    • Alternately, you can localize the MOF, and then remove the Translatable qualifier from the generated schema. Note that you must also remove the reference ID.