Re: Some additional obscure questions...

[Michael Kirkham <mikek@muonics.com>]

On Fri, 7 Feb 2003, Bob Natale wrote:

> >Even if the TC definition appears *later* in the *same* module?
>
> This never *needs* to happen (IMHO).  Good practice
> and common sense argues for defining TCs before you
> use them in object definitions.
>
> If it *had* to happen...by some explicit requirement
> of the SMI or by some unavoidable consequence of
> other explicit requirements of the SMI...then I'd
> have a different opinion about supporting such
> forward references.

It's not so much a question of whether or not it "needs" to happen in most
cases -- in most cases it it doesn't "need" to happen -- but more a
question of whether or not it (a) can happen legally [yes] (b) whether a
particular implementation wants to enforce an organizational convention
that, while most common, isn't the only valid convention.  That's your
prerogative, of course, but it doesn't do much to promote interoperability
if every implementation chooses only to support their own subset of the
SMI.

There is no case that I can think of offhand that a person couldn't design
a MIB module (or set of MIB modules) such that all of the OID assignments
are in ascending order without forward referencing in those assignments.
But sometimes you've got to work with what you're given if the design
isn't up to you and you're just trying to use or implement someone else's
design.

--
Michael Kirkham
www.muonics.com