WMI and PowerShell Collection Objects

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This section describes how to define collection objects for WMI and PowerShell Dynamic Applications.

NOTE: This section describes only the fields specific to Defining a Collection Object for a WMI or PowerShell Dynamic Application. All the remaining fields, for both performance and configuration archetypes, are described in detail in the general section on Dynamic Application Development. All other elements of WMI and PowerShell Collection Objects, such as presentation objects and alerts, behave in the same manner as other Dynamic Application types. For details on other parts of WMI or PowerShell Dynamic Applications, see the general section on Dynamic Application Development.

WMI-Specific Fields for Collection Objects

Unlike collection objects for other Dynamic Application types, collection objects for WMI Dynamic Applications are based on WMI Requests. Because of this, collection objects for WMI Dynamic Applications have the following unique fields:

  • WMI Request Arguments. When you request data from WMI or WBEM, you are requesting data from a class (table), which returns data in tabular form. In this field, you must specify the name of the property (table column) to associate with this object. This property name must be included in the WMI request, specified in the WMI Request field.

  • WMI Request. Name of the WMI request associated with this object. The WMI requests in this drop-down list are defined in one of two places:
  • If No Caching or Cache Results is selected in the Caching field in the Dynamic Applications Properties Editor page for this Dynamic Application, this list contains all WMI Requests defined in the WMI Requests tab for this Dynamic Application. Select from the list of WMI requests defined for this Dynamic Application.
  • If Consume cached results is selected in the Caching drop-down list in the Dynamic Applications Properties Editor page, this list contains all WMI Requests defined in WMI Dynamic Applications that have Cache results selected in the Caching field in the Dynamic Applications Properties Editor page. Select from the list of cached WMI requests.

NOTE: If Consume cached results is selected in the Caching field in the Dynamic Applications Properties Editor page for a Dynamic Application, the WMI Requests tab is hidden and you cannot define WMI Requests for this Dynamic Application. You can only reference WMI Requests that reside in Dynamic Applications that cache results.

PowerShell-Specific Fields for Collection Objects

Unlike collection objects for other Dynamic Application types, collection objects for PowerShell Dynamic Applications are based on PowerShell Requests. Because of this, collection objects for PowerShell Dynamic Applications have the following unique fields:

  • PowerShell Arguments. Enter the property that is associated with this collection object. This property must be included in the PowerShell command you select in the PowerShell Request field.
  • PowerShell Request. Select the PowerShell request associated with this collection object, i.e. the PowerShell command that collects values for this collection object.

For example, suppose you have defined the following PowerShell request:

Get-WmiObject Win32_DiskDrive | Select Partitions, DeviceID, Model, Size, Caption

This request returns the properties Partitions, DeviceID, Model, Size, and Caption. To store the values returned for each of the five properties, you would create five collection objects. For each of the five collection objects, supply the property name in the PowerShell Arguments field, e.g. "Partitions".