Algorius Net Viewer Manual | WMI Browser

General

WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) is the Windows management tool. It provides the detailed data about workstation hardware and software. List of provided data is almost unlimited – it includes data on installed software, hardware and its current state, launched processes and services, various statistics and lots more.

WMI is based on object-oriented principle, so all OS data are presented as objects (instances) and its properties and methods. There are various types of the objects – they are called classes.

All classes are grouped into namespaces. WMI has one root namespace called Root, which has several namespaces of the lower level. The basic ones are: CIMv2, Default, Security, WMI.

Special WQL (WMI Query Language) language is used to address WMI object. WQL is a subtype of SQL language.

WMI browser is the convenient network administrator’s tool, available in Algorius Net Viewer. You can use it to browse WMI classes in various namespaces, instances of these classes, values of its properties. You can browse data both from local workstation and remotely. You can execute WQL queries and have the derived data displayed.

WMI browser significantly simplifies the configuration of WMI sensor due to automation of namespace selection and development of WQL query.

Launch

There are two ways to launch WMI Browser:

From device context menu — browser is launched in read-only mode.
From WMI sensor configuration — in this case you can select the required info, click OK and current namespace and WQL query will be selected for WMI sensor.

WMI browser window contains the following major sections:

Toolbar (on the top);
Classes list (on the left)
Namespace MIB files tree (under the classes);
Data table (main part of the window)
WQL query (under data table).

Toolbar includes following elements:

	Login Connect to specified computer to browse its WMI information. Optionally you can specify name and password of a user on the remote computer. To enable WMI access, RPC service should be started on the remote computer. See Troubleshooting for more information.	Ctrl+L
	Previous query Go to the previous class or query.	Alt+Left
	Next query Go to the next class or query.	Alt+Right
	Print Print the data about current element of the tree. Preview window will be shown, where you can select a printer, set up print parameters and start printing.	Ctrl+P
	Export to CSV Export the data about current tree element to CSV file. This file can be then opened in text editor or Excel.
	Update	F5
	Favorites Select class from the list of favorites classes and go to it.
	Add to favorites Add current class to the list of favorites classes.
	Remove from favorites Remove current class from the list of favorites classes.

Operations with Classes

Select namespace to browse the WMI class. List of all classes in this namespace will be displayed. Select the required class from the list. Objects of this class and values of its properties will be displayed. You can use search to find a class by its name.

Frequently used classes can be marked as favorites. Just select the required class and push the button Add to Favorites – it is located on the toolbar. Current class will be added to Favorites and it will be enough to select it from Favorites to go to this class. If you need to remove any class from Favorites, just select the required class and click Remove from Favorites.

Checking Values

Just select the required class in the list to check its objects. All objects of this class will be displayed under the class, and data table will be populated with the property values of these objects. You can select specific object from the list and data table will be populated with property values for this object only.

If WMI browser is launched from configuration of WMI sensor, you can select the required property of a specific class or object. Property value will be displayed. After clicking OK current namespace and WQL query will be selected for WMI sensor.

When you have selected a class or an object, query to get its data is composed automatically. You can edit the resulted query and execute any other WQL query. Thus you can limit the query results or filter by various parameters. Just click Enter in query editor or Execute button on the right from editor to run the query.

Data in the table can be printed or exported to CSV format, which is compatible both with text editors and Excel.