Classes, Properties and Instances

Classes and Instances

Classes are the basic management units. Each class is a model (a pattern) for an object type.

The instances of a class are the actual objects present in this class.

Example:
The class Win32_LogicalDisk is a model for each drive that can exist on Windows computers. The instances of this class are the physical and logical (connected) drives:

Properties and Methods

Properties describe the individual instances of a class. Each class has one or more properties. Each property is of a particular type, such as String, Integer or DateTime. One or more properties can be keys or key properties of the class that can be used to identify each instance of this class.

Example:
The Win32_LogicalDisk class also has the following properties:

• "Caption" – the name of the drive
• "Size" – the free disk space on the drive

Methods are interfaces that the classes can use to execute actions. The methods are addressed using WMI. A class can have no, one or more methods. Ivanti DSMcurrently only supports the export of properties, but not the execution of meth­ods.

Example:
The Win32_NetworkAdapterConfiguration class describes the properties and methods of network adapters. If a computer has two network cards there are two instances in this class. The properties are assigned the values that correspond to the network card configuration:

Properties	Network card 1 (instance 1)	Network card 2 (instance 2)
IPAddress	192.100.50.30	192.200.30.10
DNSDomainSuffix-SearchOrder	es.heatsoftware.com	muc.heatsoftware.com