Software: What is WDM?
Published on May 2, 2008 by TIS Marketing.
Nowadays, we consider it completely normal that when we install a new word processing program that we do not have to tell the computer what type of mouse we are using. However, as those of us who remember the first mice under DOS, will know that then this was certainly not the case. Only once APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) for device classes at operating system level were introduced was the separation of applications software and hardware possible.
The APIs for image streams are brought together in Windows under the umbrella of DirectX and more specifically DirectShow. Using this technology, any image acquisition software product can work together with any multimedia camera, for example.
So that any image creating hardware (for example, FireWire cameras) is recognized by DirectShow, it is necessary that a so-called WDM stream class driver is available (WDM = Windows Driver Model).