Re: Methods in SMIng?

[Juergen Schoenwaelder <schoenw@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de>]

>>>>> Jerome Duprez writes:

Jerome>     I am new to IETF procedures, and acknowledge there are
Jerome> timing issues between the various draft documents, but I'd
Jerome> like to get more information, even informal, on this subject :
Jerome> - What is the current status about methods definition?

There is an ongoing debate on the requirements, methods are one part
of it. So you need to follow or participate in the requirements
discussion if you have an opinion.

Jerome> - Which are the arguments against them?

I can give you my favourite - but there might be others: Both, COPS-PR
and SNMP do not support method invocations in the protocol. So if we
add methods to SMIng, then we have three options (I can think of):

1 You can define them, but they just do not work with COPS-PR or SNMP.
2 We emulate method invocation on top of what the protocol provides
  us. In other words, we define some interesting SNMP/COPS-PR tables
  to emulate method invocations with set/install/remove operations.
3 We convince the protocol folks to support method invocations in SNMP
  and COPS-PR.

For me, option 1 is a bit stupid because allowing people to define
methods without being able to invoke then seems like a waste of time.
Option 2 is what I consider a truely ugly hack rather than a solution
of the problem. Option 3 is IMHO technically the only way to do
methods, but I doubt that the protocol folks are willing to go
there. So there is a dilemma. And given this dilemma, I prefer to stay
away from methods at this point in time (but make the language
extensible so they might be added later).

Jerome> - In case a majority of the WG still desires to specify
Jerome> methods, is there some proposed syntax, and examples of method
Jerome> signatures?

Not yet since we first need to find out whether we are going into this
direction. I think Maria did post some ideas.

Jerome> - Otherwise, what is the foreseable schedule for the next
Jerome> revisions of SMIng drafts adressing this topic?

See above. We first need resolution whether we want to do methods at
all at this point in time.

/js