Using the WMI table type

Windows includes an interface through which various components of the operating system can provide useful system information. This interface is called Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). The WMI table type allows us to easily connect to and display information from this interface.

Getting ready

As WMI is specific to the Windows operating system, this recipe uses Windows.

How to do it...

1. Launch the mysql command-line client application and connect to the test database on our MariaDB server. If the test database does not exist, create it first.

2. Run the following CREATE TABLE statement to create a WMI table:

   CREATE TABLE alias (
     friendlyname char(32) NOT NULL,
     target char(64) NOT NULL
   ) ENGINE=CONNECT TABLE_TYPE='WMI'
   OPTION_LIST='Namespace=root\\cli,Class=Msft_CliAlias';
   

3. Run the following SELECT statement to query the table:

   SELECT * FROM alias;
   

How it works...

The WMI table type maps rows to each instance of the related information. To accomplish this mapping...