Re: I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-sming-reqs-00.txt

[Chris Elliott <chelliot@cisco.com>]

All,

Here's section 4 for the SMIng requirements doc.

Chris.


Chris Elliott  CCIE# 2013       |         |
Customer Diagnostic Engineer   |||       |||
RTP, NC, USA                  |||||     |||||
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chelliot@cisco.com        c i s c o S y s t e m s
 4. Compliance, Conformance, and Capability Reporting

   The data description language must have the ability to describe: 
   1) the acceptable lower bounds of implementation of data modeled
   using this language; and 2) the actual level of implementation
   achieved in a particular agent implementation. This ability 
   should be implemented in a protocol-independent manner. This
   ability is the same as the ability described in RFC 2580
   (reference: [RFC 2580]) for SMIv2 and implemented through the
   OBJECT-GROUP, NOTIFICATION-GROUP, MODULE-COMPLIANCE, and
   AGENT-CAPABILITIES macros.

   The data description language must have the same ability as SMIv2
   to describe the minimum level of implementation and the actual
   level of implementation; however it must be instantiated in a
   protocol independent manner as this information is not dependent
   on the data transport protocol.

   The data description language must be able to describe the actual
   level of implementation achieved separately from the data model
   itself so that the actual capabilities of a particular agent
   implementation can be defined and modified without modifying the
   data model itself.

   The data description language should be extended beyond the
   abilities described in SMIv2. The object here is to standardize
   information that currently is placed in the description clause or
   other clauses that are not easily parsed automatically in 
   existing implementations of SMIv2. It is desirable that the
   following capabilities be added to the abilities that exist in
   SMIv2:

      * The ability to describe relationships between objects such
      that relationships such as "group a must be implemented if
      optional group b is implemented" can be expressed as part of
      the language, not only in the description of the object(s).

      * The ability to describe the particular agent implementation
      described in a structured way. This information should include
      the following information, at a minimum:

        * Vendor
        * Device name or category
        * Major hardware version
        * Minor hardware version
        * Major release version
        * Minor release version
        * Additional textual information required to distinguish
          this agent implementation from other implementations with
          different capabilities

    - The ability to extend the definition of a particular agent
      implementation for newer or different implementations that are
      supersets of the existing definition.