Re: comments on draft-ietf-sming-reqs-03.txt

[Jeff Case <case@snmp.com>]

hi joel, et. al.

>Jeff, I think that there is a more basic question that underlies the
>issues, include your strong request for better SMIv2 compatibility.
>To whit:
>    what are we trying to accomplish?
>Sometimes we say ~bring smi and sppi together.~
>Sometimes we say ~bring forward the state of the art in nm protocol
>engineering.~
>and sometimes we just say ~make things better in a not too disruptive fashion.~

well said 

>While these goals are related, they are different.  For example, if you
>focus on the first goal, then a consequence is that you want to make it as
>simple and clean a mapping to smi and sppi as possible.  If you focus on
>the second goal, then you want to focus on what makes the resulting whole
>work better, and minor changes that would be painful by themselvesw are
>acceptable because the make the whole thing hang together.

we agree

>I believe that this inconsistency is why we simultaneously have a very long
>list of requirements and a number of people who feel that the requirements
>miss the point one way or another.  I have not spoken up about specific
>requirements because I can not tell what goal is being sought and therefore
>which goals make sense.

ok

what i tried to say in a recent note is that you cannot optimize
47 things simultaneously ... if i recall you were a math major
and you'll probably agree that there are very few square matrices that are
singular (or is that nonsingular?) ... which is to say that if you
have this many requirements, one or more are inexorably in conflict with 
one another (i.e., not orthogonal?)

you said it much better than i seem to be able to

best regards,
jdc