Accessing a WMI Collection

A collection is a standard automation concept that provides a uniform interface to a set of objects over which you can perform iteration. The Scripting API for WMI exposes a number of interfaces that conform to the collection paradigm. In each case, use the Item method to identify the elements using a string containing the value.

The SWbemPropertySet, SWbemQualifierSet, and SWbemMethodSet collections are mostly used to modify schema. An SWbemObjectSet object contains WMI objects, such as a Win32_LogicalDisk instance, that have been obtained through calls, such as SWbemServices.InstancesOf or SWbemObject.Associators_. The SWbemRefresher object can only contain instances of WMI classes. The SWbemNamedValueSet object may contain WMI objects or any other type of data that a provider requires for the method call.

Note

The following topics were written primarily for VBScript. C# uses the standard IEnumerable interface to collate and enumerate objects. In contrast, PowerShell generally uses an implicit object collection whenever a return value contains more than one result.

 

The following table lists the collections in the Scripting API for WMI and the elements and parameters for each collection.

Collection	Element	Item() Parameter
SWbemObjectSet	SWbemObject	Object path
SWbemPropertySet	SWbemProperty	Property name
SWbemQualifierSet	SWbemQualifier	Qualifier name
SWbemMethodSet	SWbemMethod	Method name
SWbemNamedValueSet	SWbemNamedValue	Value name
SWbemPrivilegeSet	SWbemPrivilege	Privilege name
SWbemRefresher	SWbemRefreshableItem	Index of the item in the SWbemRefresher object

 

For more information about and examples of adding and removing items from a collection, see Removing a Single Item from a Collection and Removing Multiple Items from a Collection. For more information about working with classes, see Manipulating Class and Instance Information.