Re: Closing on NIM requirements

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand <Harald@Alvestrand.no>]

At 18:01 16.04.2000 -0400, Jon Saperia wrote:
>on 04/16/2000 5:49 PM, Harald Tveit Alvestrand at Harald@Alvestrand.no
>wrote:
>
> > there's a distinction between "effectively represent" and "represent" that
> > I think is important.
> > We may have to accept that when you try to manipulate a business inventory
> > system through SNMP, there are things you just can't get at easily - or at
> > all; see the recent discussions on managing configurations through SNMP,
> > for instance.
>
>Two points:
>
>1. Unless there must be some other discussion I have missed with regard to
>SNMP and configuration - I must have missed something. Perhaps you can
>enlighten me, short of that I am not sure I buy your last sentence.

I was thinking of informal talks that led up to the SNMPCONF bof in 
Adelaide; I wasn't at the BOF, so don't know how they concluded.
At least before the BOF, it was thought to be (close to?) impossible to use 
SNMP with current MIBs to change from one consistent configuration to 
another without going through a lot of undesired intermediate states - no 
transaction semantics across multiple updates.


>2. Different tools can be 'a good thing' as long as they are not attempting
>to do effectively the same thing. This is a discussion many of us on this
>list have had quite a lot and my point is not to restart it. My point is
>that the modeling language should/must take into account mechanisms that are
>going to be used to realize functions. If they are deficient you fix them,
>replace them, or change the language.

The most important thing is that the modelling language reflect reality.
If the current tools are part of that reality - I agree with you.
If the model can serve as a basis for choosing the appropriate tool - 
perhaps I disagree.

                 Harald

--
Harald Tveit Alvestrand, EDB Maxware, Norway
Harald.Alvestrand@edb.maxware.no