Creating and Delivering Indications

When a client application subscribes for indications of CIM events by creating an instance of the CIM_IndicationSubscription class, the CIM Object Manager forwards the request to the appropriate provider. If the provider implements the EventProvider interface, the CIM Object Manager notifies the provider when to start sending indications for the specified events by calling the provider's activateFilter method. In addition, the CIM Object Manager notifies the provider when to stop sending indications for the specified events by calling the provider's deActivateFilter method.

The provider responds to the CIM Object Manager's requests by creating and delivering an indication each time the provider creates, modifies, or deletes an instance. A provider typically defines a flag variable that is set when the CIM Object Manager calls the activateFilter method that is cleared when the CIM Object Manager calls the deActivateFilter method. Then in each method that creates, modifies, or deletes an instance, the provider checks the status of the activate filter flag. If the flag is set, the provider creates an indication containing the created CIM instance object and uses the deliverEvent method to return the indication to the CIM Object Manager. If the flag is not set, the provider does not create and deliver an indication of the event.

A provider starts delivering indications when the activateFilter method is called. The provider creates instances of concrete subclasses of CIM_Indication and invokes the ProviderCIMOMHandled.deliverIndication method. The CIM Object Manager receives the indication and delivers the indication to the appropriate indication handlers. A provider can handle multiple event types. For example, in the case of life cycle indications, a provider can handle CIM_InstCreation, CIM_InstDeletion, and CIM_InstModification.

To keep track of types that have subscriber interest, the provider can use the firstActivation and lastActivation flags passed in the activateFilter and deActivateFilter calls, respectively. The firstActivation flag is true when the subscription is the first one for the particular event type. Similarly, lastActivation is true when the last subscription for the particular event type is removed. By checking these flags, the provider can easily allocate or deallocate resources to monitor the specified event types.