Understanding Perl View Objects

A view is a client-side Perl object populated with the state of one or more server-side managed objects by the vSphere SDK for Perl. A view object has the following characteristics:

■	Is a static copy of a server-side managed object and includes properties and methods that correspond to the properties and operations of the server-side managed object.

■	Must be explicitly updated when the object on the server changes. See Updating View Objects.

■	Has properties that correspond to properties of server-side managed objects as follows:

■	For each simple property (string, Boolean, numeric data type), including inherited simple properties, the SDK creates an accessor method. The accessor method name is the same as the property name.

■	Arrays of properties become arrays of properties of the same name.

■	Includes these methods:

■	An accessor method for each managed object property. The vSphere SDK for Perl provides accessors for any property, regardless of its depth inside a composite object structure.

■	A blocking and a non-blocking method for each (non-blocking) operation provided by the server-side managed object. See Non-Blocking and Blocking Methods.

■	A method that updates the state of any client-side view object with current data from the server. See Updating View Objects.

The vSphere SDK for Perl simplifies programming as follows:

■	Provides a _this parameter to reference the object on which a method is run, if needed.

■	Allows you to pass a view object as a parameter to methods that take managed object references as required parameter. The SDK converts the view object to the corresponding managed object.