1 Introduction

The Windows Management Instrumentation Encoding Version 1.0 Protocol specifies a binary data encoding format that is used by the Windows Management Instrumentation Remote Protocol, specified in [MS-WMI] for network communication.

The carrier protocol for this encoding is the Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) Remote Protocol, as specified in [MS-DCOM], which is used in combination with Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) interfaces, as specified in [MS-WMI]. This specification does not specify the Windows Management Instrumentation Remote Protocol operations; it instead specifies the data encoding that is used by the protocol.

WMI uses the Common Information Model (CIM), which is published and maintained by the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) (see [DMTF]). The Common Information Model (CIM) Infrastructure Specification (as specified in [DMTF-DSP0004]) defines the object model itself. This specification depends entirely on the metamodel and terminology specified in the DMTF specification set. The reader is referred to the CIM Infrastructure Specification for a description of the CIM metamodel. The CIM objects that are transferred by the Windows Management Instrumentation Remote Protocol are CIM objects encoded by using the technique specified in this specification.

The DMTF CIM specifications only specify a text-based encoding that is called Managed Object Format (MOF). However, MOF is inefficient for network use. The format specified in this document is an efficient binary format for describing CIM objects within network packets.

Sections 1.7 and 2 of this specification are normative. All other sections and examples in this specification are informative.