SMS Schema

Microsoft® Systems Management Server (SMS) version 2.0 uses Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) to manage its objects. Any managed object, such as a disk drive or a collection of computers, can be represented by an instance of an SMS class. SMS also includes classes that represent SMS features such as software distribution. Collectively, these SMS classes are known as the SMS schema.

Note that SMS 2.0 continues to use a Microsoft® SQL Server™ database to store managed object data, but SMS now uses the WMI API to view and manipulate that managed data. The SMS Provider acts as an intermediary between SMS site information and WMI by supplying both class and instance data.

The SMS classes that represent the SMS schema are declared in SMSProv.mof. This file contains the base classes, static classes, and methods that the SMS Provider supports. Other class definitions, notably those that support inventory, are determined at run time by the SMS Provider. When requested, these class definitions are supplied to WMI. These are called run-time classes.

The SMSProv.mof file is located in the \Bin\<Platform>\ directory under the SMS install directory.

For more information about the classes that the SMS Provider supports, see Class Schema Reference.