Side by side comparison

["David T. Perkins" <dperkins@dsperkins.com>]

HI,

From time to time on the comp.protocols.snmp news group people ask
the question of which tools to use in developing MIB modules,
which agent tool kit to use, which management app to use, etc.

I'm considering doing a comparison of MIB development tools, and
writing up an article. If so, I would appreciate getting suggestions
on the attributes that I should use evaluating in the tools.
For example, here is my quick list:
 1) Does the tool check MIB modules for correctness?
 2) For MIB checking, are the types of checks configurable?
 3) For MIB checking, can the type of module be specified (such as
    module originally in SMIv1, but converted to SMIv2; MIB module
    for IETF standards track, etc) because the "rules are different".
 4) Does the tool check versions of modules, including splitting
    or combining definitions to/from several modules? (That is,
    check if the modifications from collection 1 of MIB modules
    to create collection 2 of MIB modules is valid, and summarize
    the changes.)
 5) What types of outputs are available, such as C code for agents,
    diagrams, conversion to another SMI version, pretty printed module,
    etc.
 6) Verification that a MIB module does not conflict with a collection
    of other MIB modules. For example, "descriptors" in IETF MIB
    modules have to be unique, but the descriptor in an enterprise
    MIB module does not have to be unique from descriptors in MIB
    modules from the IETF (or other enterprises). Or, that OID values
    used for registration are globally unique.
 7) Does the tool set have a "MIB editor" to assist creation and
    modification of MIB modules, and is the editor GUI or text based?
 8) Does the tool set have a mechanism to associate new information
    fields with definitions from MIB modules, such as adding field
    "short description" to definitions of object types? And a way
    to populate the values of the additional fields?
 9) Does the tool set have the capability to search a collection of
    MIB modules for the value of a field, such as find all object types
    whose descriptor matches a specified regex? Or find all items
    whose description text matches a regex? Or find all tables
    that use a specific object in the INDEX or AUGMENTS clause?
 
Regards,
/david t. perkins