Re: clarification on deprecate/obsolete objects

[Michael Kirkham <mikek@muonics.com>]

deprecated/obsolete are STATUS values, not MAX-ACCESS values, and the
represent the state of the definition in the MIB module in terms of its
historic and future significance, but have no signifiance with regard to
an agent's response when getting or setting objects whose STATUS is one of
those given.  If an agent implements a particular object, its response is
not governed in any way by its STATUS value.

If a definition is "deprecated" then it simply means that it's no longer
of major importance to the MIB module as a whole and need not be
implemented by new agents except for backwards compatibility with older
agents that do implement them.  It also means that at some point in the
future those definitions may have replacements and the old definitions
will be made "obsolete".

If it's "obsolete" then it usually means that are new definitions that
replace the old ones and the new ones should be used in any new
implementation (and, if possible, old implementations should be brought in
line with the new definitions).

The issue of whether or not an agent returns 'noSuchName' depends solely
on the type of query, the manager's permissions for performing the query
on that object, and whether or not the object is implemented at all.  An
object may be deprected or obsolete, yet if an agent implements that
object and it is in view, and the manager has the appropriate permissions,
it will not return 'noSuchName' for a get or set (if writeable) operation.
Get-next will never return 'noSuchName' unless there are no other readable
object instances in view with OID values greater than that specified in
the query (and then only with SNMPv1: SNMPv2c and v3 return 'noError' and
the 'endOfMibView' exception, but then there are also other possible
error-status/exception values for get/set operations with those versions).

On Wed, 14 May 2003, Kurapati, mahesh wrote:

> Date: Wed, 14 May 2003 23:26:58 -0400
> From: "Kurapati, mahesh" <maheshk@netplane.com>
> To: mibs@ops.ietf.org
> Subject: clarification on deprecate/obsolete objects
>
> HI all,
>
> Thank you for the clarification on RowStatus object.
>
> This time, I have question on the objects whose MAX-ACCESS is defined as
> deprecated/obsolete. Please let me know whether my understanding of how to
> instrument these objects at Agent is correct.
>
> For deprecated object:
> Agent returns 'noSuchName' error, whenever this object is tried to access by
> GET/GETNEXT/SET.  Manager has to issue  GET/NEXT/SET on the alternative
> object provided in the description of the deprecated object. Is this
> understanding correct?
>
> For obsolete objects:
> Agent returns 'noSuchName' when this object is tried to access by
> GET/NEXT/SET. There need not be any alternative objects for the obsolete. I
> mean it is not mandatory to have an alternative object for this in the MIB
> module.  If an alternative object is there, Manager may access it. Is this
> understanding correct?
>
> I am confused, for me it looks both of them serve the same purpose. please
> clarify me.
>
> Thanks
> Mahesh
>

--
Michael Kirkham
www.muonics.com