Re: ordering constraints / procedures

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

>>>>> Robert Story writes:

Robert> 1) SMIng must provide a mechanism to formally express ordering
Robert> constraints.

Robert> 2) SMIng should support a mechanism to formally define
Robert> procedures that are used by managers when interacting with an
Robert> agent.

Robert> Can someone explain if there is a difference between these
Robert> two? If they are the same, I vote that the "ordering
Robert> constraints" name is clearer than "procedures."

The concept of procedures came out of some discussions about
methods. Right now, people implement methods with a couple of writable
objects, some status objects that report the status of the invoked
"method", and some result/error objects. To use these objects, the
manager has to follow certain procedures such as:

(1) create/set the following set of objects
(2) poll the following objects until the method is complete
(3) retrieve some objects which carry result/error information
(4) do some cleanup set operations

In other words, procedures probably go somewhat further than just
ordering constraints (but frankly, I also do not know what ordering
constraints includes and what not).

Disclaimer: I am just trying to clarify where these requirements came
from and what they mean. This should not be read as a statement that I
support these ideas or not.

/js

-- 
Juergen Schoenwaelder      Technical University Braunschweig
<schoenw@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de>  Dept. Operating Systems & Computer Networks
Phone: +49 531 391 3289    Bueltenweg 74/75, 38106 Braunschweig, Germany
Fax:   +49 531 391 5936    <URL:http://www.ibr.cs.tu-bs.de/~schoenw/>