The Splunk Common Information Model (CIM) is a collection of data models that apply a common structure and naming convention to data from any source. A data model is a type of knowledge object that defines the structure and relationships of fields in a dataset. A data model can have one or more datasets, which are subsets of the data model that represent different aspects of the data. For example, the Network Traffic data model has datasets such as All Traffic, DNS, HTTP, etc. The CIM contains 28 pre-configured data models that cover various domains such as authentication, network traffic, web, email, etc. The CIM is implemented as an add-on that contains the JSON files for the data models, documentation, and tools that support the consistent, normalized treatment of data for maximum efficiency at search time23
1: Splunk Core Certified Power User Track, page 10. 2: Splunk Documentation, Overview of the Splunk Common Information Model 1. 3: Splunkbase, Splunk Common Information Model (CIM) 2.