WMI : Windows management instrumentation (Intro)

The purpose of WMI is to provide a uniform interface for any local or remote applications or scripts that obtain management data from a computer system, network, or enterprise. The uniform interface WMI layer means that applications and scripts which are clients to WMI do not have to call a wide variety of operating system application programming interfaces (APIs), many of which cannot be called by automation clients like scripts or Visual Basic applications. Many operating system APIs also do not make calls to remote machines.
A management application communicates with WMI through a variety of languages, such as Visual Basic, C++, ODBC, and ActiveX. All scripting languages that can handle ActiveX objects can access WMI data. All WMI interfaces are based on the Component Object Model (COM). After WMI retrieves data, it stores the data using the Common Information Model, a public standard.