Glossary Glossary


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Top of Page authentication

The service that is used to verify a user's login credentials, such as a username and password.

Top of Page authorization

The service that is used to decide whether an action towards some critical system resource is to be allowed or denied, based on the security policy currently in effect. See Authorization for more information.

Top of Page CIM

Common Information Model; a set of templates (schemas) specifying a data format for enterprise management information that is independent of platform and management application.

Top of Page console

A container for SMC client tools; the SMC "desktop" from which users perform management tasks.

Top of Page event bus

In SMC, a chain that allows components to create, send, and listen for events to or from other components in the console. Every component in the console is given a reference to these properties and is added to the event bus; components then can get and set properties to effect behavior. They may also send and receive events which may/may not correspond directly with user interaction.

Event bus

Top of Page infrastructure

Collective term for the object model, communications protocols, platform-specific APIs, and core services used as the "glue" layer between client and server components; for example, native SMC tools and services used JavaBeans communicating over RMI, with server components having some Solaris-specific dependencies, and using the core SMC authentication, authorization, security, messaging, logging, preferences, and launch services.

Top of Page JavaBean

A portable, platform-independent reusable component model; native SMC tools are written as sets of JavaBeans, while SMC services are often written as a combination of JavaBeans and platform-specific code.

Top of Page launch

The act of starting a computer application. With respect to SMC, this refers to the service for launching legacy (non-SMC aware) applications. See Launching for more information.

Top of Page logging

The service for posting and tracking messages that pertain to important system events. See Logging for more information.

Top of Page Look and Feel

A pluggable user interface component in the SMC system; SMC includes a default Explorer-like look and feel for the Solaris Management tools, with a tree view on the left, a results pane on the right, and an information pane on the botton. See UI Components for more information.

Top of Page messaging

A mechanism for exchanging messages between 2 or more clients. See Messaging for more information.

Top of Page properties

Named values that effect application behavior and/or presentation, and which can persist from one session to the next. Properties are managed by the VConsoleProperties class.

Top of Page RBAC

Determining the authorization for an access request by mapping to an attribute of the requestor, such as membership in a group, job function, or organizational level, rather than on the individual's unique identity; assumes that a person will take on different roles over time, and different responsibilities in relation to IT systems; access control based on specific rules relating to the nature of the subject and object, beyond just their identities.

Top of Page registration

The process by which a tool or service is made known to the SMC console. All tools and services must be registered in the SMC object registry and associated with a toolbox before they can appear in an SMC console.

Note smcconf is a command-line tool to administer the application registry. It provides the capability to manipulate the toolbox and perform registry-related tasks.

See Registration for more information.

Top of Page RMI

Remote Method Invocation; a distributed object model for communication between Java programs, in which the methods of remote objects written in Java can be invoked from other Java virtual machines, possibly on different hosts. RMI is the native communications model used by SMC tools and services.

Top of Page service

Server-side applications that support SMC tools; native SMC services are generally a combinatation of Java and platform-specific code.

Top of Page SunMC

Sun Management Center; an open, extended, standards-based server monitoring and management solution that uses JavaTM and SNMP protocols to provide an integrated and comprehensive enterprise-wide management of Sun server products and their subsystems, components, and peripheral devices.

Top of Page tool

Client-side applications; in SMC, all tools are written as sets of JavaBeans.

Top of Page Tool class

The top-level client class instantiated by the Console; the main interface that SMC clients must implement. See Tool for more information.

Top of Page Tool Descriptor

Provides information to represent a tool without actually instantiating the tool. See Tool Descriptor for more information.

Top of Page toolkit

Collections of Glossarytools associated with a given user, group, or administrative role. Toolkits are defined with toolkit properties files, which specify tool names, locations, and managed scope.

Top of Page VConsoleActionListener class

Provides the interface through which tools can be notified about various events in the system. See VConsoleActionListener for more information.

Top of Page VConsoleProperties class

Shared properties object used by all components in an SMC system for property storage. See VConsoleProperties for more information.

Top of Page VScopeNode class

The most common (and arguably the most important) SMC tool class; provides information (icons, column headers, payload, etc.) about a data model to the console, whether that information is rendered in the left-side navigation pane, or the right-side results pane. See VScopeNode for more information.

Top of Page WBEM

Web-Based Enterprise Management; standard for defining platform-independent management information across platforms; initiated by the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) to define a Common Information Model (CIM), and further refined by Sun Microsystems; management information is made available to management applications via eXtensible Markup Language (XML) over the common Web protocol HyperText Transport Protocol (HTTP).