Defining Vital Product Data (VPD)

The DMI facility provides a standard way to register the hardware and software on the system. This allows both system software and system-based software (for example, application programs or device drivers) to register with the system. This information is called Vital Product Data (VPD). The system uses VPD to identify the source of error log entries. Various system management applications require access to the VPD information. When a product component uses FFSTProbe to log an error, the error logging function automatically includes the VPD information in the error record.

The VPD information allows systems management applications to assume a base level of VPD for all conforming products on a system. The VPD information for software products differs from the VPD information for hardware products. You can define additional specialized VPD information for your product.

Both your component's install object (that the feature installer uses to install your product) and the FFSTProbe parameter information must have identical information. This enables DMI to provide the template file that is specified on the call to FFSTProbe. Recommendations for these values are:

• Vendor - a description of the organization or company that developed the product that is reporting an error (example: IBM).

• Tag - a unique description of the product that is reporting an error (example: FFSTProbe SAMPLE).

• Revision - optional description of the development organization's revision level, change level, or version of the product that is reporting an error. (example: 1.0.1c). If a component within a product is reporting the error, the revision may not correspond to the revision level of the entire product.

Programmers refer to the Vendor, Tag, and Revision values as the DMI triplet.

When your code calls FFSTProbe, the DMI triplet values you specified must match the DMI values stored in the DMI database for your product. If the values do not match, FFSTProbe cannot find the VPD for your product in the DMI database.

If the DMI triplet for your product matches the DMI triplet of a different product, the results are unpredictable.