[This is preliminary documentation and subject to change.]
Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) object paths are used to access namespaces, classes, and instances. Each instance of a class has a unique path which identifies it locally or over the network. Object paths are conceptually similar to Universal Resource Locators (URLs). Object paths can be fully qualified or relative to a certain location, such as the local machine or a particular namespace on the local machine.
The namespace in which a class or instance resides can be specified if it is different from the current namespace. The most important part of an object path for a class is its name; the most important part for an instance is its class name and key. This use of keys to distinguish instances parallels the relational database model where key columns are used to index and distinguish rows of a table.
Object paths are used in the reference properties of association classes to identify related objects.
For information about how to create object paths, see Specifying Object Paths.