Several providers are included in Microsoft Provisioning System. Most of these are installed by default when you install Microsoft Provisioning Framework (MPF). You install the other three providers, as required. To implement the full functionality of Delegated Administration Console, you must use all of the providers included with Microsoft Provisioning System.
Installing any of the providers included in Microsoft Provisioning System automatically installs the corresponding namespace and registers the namespace in MPF. In Provisioning Manager, the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in for MPF, the namespace properties specify the name of the provider that is called by that namespace.
MPF supports the development of custom providers in Microsoft Visual C++, Microsoft Visual Basic, and other platforms. Development in Visual C++ and Visual Basic is supported by Microsoft Provisioning Framework Software Development Kit (SDK). The Microsoft Provisioning Framework SDK contains wizards for both Visual C++ and Visual Basic that automatically generate the basic structures of provider objects and procedures.
After creating a provider and its associated namespace, you can use regsvr32.exe to register the provider on every computer that has a provisioning engine. After registering the provider, you register the namespace by using Provisioning Manager to import it.
For more information about providers, see What a provider is and How a provider works. For more information on the providers available in Microsoft Provisioning System, see Provider namespaces available in Microsoft Provisioning System. For information on requests, see Request architecture. For information on procedures, see Procedure architecture. For information on namespaces, see Namespace architecture. The Microsoft Provisioning Framework Software Development Kit (SDK) contains additional resources to help you implement procedures, requests, and namespaces. This includes the complete XML schema for all elements and information on how to implement providers. For more information on the SDK and how to use it, see Microsoft Provisioning Framework SDK.