| Description | string | The CollectionOfMSEs object allows the grouping of Managed SystemElements for various identification purposes and to reduce the complexity of associating Settings and Configurations. It is abstract to require further definition and semantic refinement in subclasses. The CollectionOfMSEs object does not carry any state or status information, but represents only a grouping or 'bag' of Elements. For this reason, it is incorrect to subclass groups that have state or status from CollectionOfMSEs. An example is CIM_Redundancy Group (which is subclassed from LogicalElement).
Collections typically aggregate similar ('like') objects,but they are not required to do so. Collections simply identify 'bags' and might represent an optimization. This purpose is especially true with respect to their association to Settings and Configurations. Without Collections, you would need to define individual ElementSetting and ElementConfiguration associations, to tie Settings and Configuration objects to individual ManagedSystemElements. There might be duplication when assigning the same Setting to multiple objects. In addition, using the Collection object allows the determination that the Setting and Configuration associations are indeed the same for the Collection's members. This information would otherwise be obtained by defining the Collection in a proprietary manner, and then querying the ElementSetting and ElementConfiguration associations to determine if the Collection set is completely covered. |