Re: section 3.2 of draft-ietf-ops-mib-review-guidelines-00.txt

["C. M. Heard" <heard@pobox.com>]

On Fri, 7 Feb 2003, Harrie Hazewinkel wrote:
> I read the document and have a few comments.
> '> ' indicates text from the draft itself (sorry it I cut/paste to 
> much).

Thanks for your comments.  I will answer all of them in detail but
there is one thing which needs a quick reply.
 
>  >3.2.  Narrative Sections
>  >
>  >
>  >   If the MIB modules defined by the specification are always
>  >   implemented in conjunction with other MIB modules, then that fact
>  >   MUST be noted in the overview section, as MUST any special
>  >   interpretations of objects in other MIB modules.  For instance, so-
>  >   called media-specific MIB modules are always implemented in
>  >   conjunction with the IF-MIB [RFC2863] and are required to document
>  >   how certain objects in the IF-MIB are used.  In addition, media-
>  >   specific MIB modules that rely on the ifStackTable [RFC2863] and the
>  >   ifInvStackTable [RFC2864] to maintain information regarding
>  >   configuration and multiplexing of interface sublayers must contain a
>  >   description of the layering model.
>
> Also the definition section should express this in its compliance
> statements. (There is later a lot of info for this compliance 
> statements.)

Not necessarily.  In particular, not if it means I need to
duplicate an entire compliance statement from one MIB module
into another.  Consider the media-specific MIB modules that
are all sparse-augments of the IF-MIB.  What you have asked
for above would have every one of them duplicating a major
part of the IF-MIB compliance statement.  That creates a big
maintenance burden, which I think greatly offsets any benefits.
In the media-specific MIB modules with which I am familiar the
practice is simply to state in the narrative section that the
IF-MIB is a required prerequisite.  They don't duplicate the
compliance statements in the IF-MIB.  If I were reviewing a
media-specific MIB module that did that, I would sat in my
review comments that I though it was a bad idea.

As a side note, I will agree that it would be nice if SMIv2
provided some way for one compliance statement to formally
say that some other compliance statement is a prerequisite.
As it stands, the best you can do (short of copying compliance
info) is to put such a statement in the DESCRIPTION clause
associated with the MODULE-COMPLIANCE.  That, I think, would
be good advice.

I wanted to get a quick answer on this topic because there are
other folks asking for the same thing, and I feel quite strongly
that there are many cases where it should not be done.

I'll deal with your other comments later, after I have had a
chance to read them.  Thanks again for taking the time to
comment.

Regards,

Mike Heard