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Re: Final BOF Agenda?

>>>>> Margaret Wasserman writes:

Margaret> I think (but am not sure) that Andy also wants to talk about
Margaret> how instance information could be represented in XML.

Just to be clear: 

- The smidump xsd output format translates a MIB module (SMIv1/SMIv2)
  into an XML schema which defines XML document formats for instance
  information.

- The smidump xml output format translates a MIB module (SMIv1/SMIv2)
  into an XML document which can be used to process MIB module
  definitions with XML tools. (This is an older project and not really
  relevant in the context of xmlconf - but it is important to not
  confuse them.)

A student is also working on an implementation (which I guess will be
available soon) which implements a gateway that returns instance data
in XML conforming to the XML schema generated by the smidump xsd
translation.

The question which remains to be discussed is how useful such an
automated translation really is. Sure, you get access to MIB data in
XML format which is easier to process for many people. Bulk transfers
become easier since you usually assume TCP as a transport. However,
with an automated translation, you do not really make any steps
forward to overcome the semantic mismatch between the low-level
data-centric MIB models and the more task-oriented models operators
seem to prefer. This also has to do with naming and references which
are implemented by some kind of pointers in MIB modules, where you
can't really hide MIB specifics when doing automated translations.
Perhaps it is more useful to do half-automated translations where MIB
augmentations are defined for translation purposed to derive XML
schemas that are closer to the underlying conceptual model.

/js

-- 
Juergen Schoenwaelder    <http://www.informatik.uni-osnabrueck.de/schoenw/>



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