The Desktop Management Interface (DMI) Management Interface Format (MIF) file is an ASCII text file that contains the attributes that describe manageable products. The MIF defines a standard way of providing the product information to be retrieved by product management applications.
A manageable product provides information about itself in the form of attributes in a MIF file that is stored in the MIF database. There is a MIF file for each manageable product on the system.
You use the attributes in the MIF file to describe components and characteristics of your product. Attributes can define the component version and revision date, the date you installed the product, or the hardware requirements that are needed to use your product. Group the specific attributes together. In this example, the component version and the revision date would be one group in the MIF file, and hardware requirements would be in a different group.
Management applications retrieve the information in your MIF file. You use the management applications to list information about your specific manageable product or all manageable products that are installed on a system.
The management applications, such as SystemView Agent or DMI Browser, contain functions that can change the DMI information for a specific manageable product. You can change the DMI information of a manageable product without reinstalling the product. The product monitors its own DMI information for any changes. When changes occur, the product updates the functions that it performs based on the new DMI information.
You can find the MIF file requirements in the SystemView Agent Programmer's Guide in the Toolkit in the Problem Determination Tools folder.
There is an example MIF file in the Toolkit that you can copy as a base for the MIF file for your product. The file name is PROBEMXP.MIF.
For an example of a MIF file, see MIF File Example.