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RE: Methods in the NIM requirements



I never said anything about a go attribute. What I asked was whether the
model should be passive or active. An active model implies that the model
itself includes the notion of taking action at a specific point in time.
Your example of "reboot now" clearly suggests an active model. In contrast,
most of the modeling work done to date (MIBs, PIBs and even the networks
model in CIM) is passive. In other words, there is little implication of
immediacy because the application of the model to a specific protocol takes
care of that. When the model is applied to a directory, it frequently is
meant to maintain state rather than take action. In contrast, when the model
is applied to a management protocol (SNMP), actions are implied by the
protocol (GETs and SETs). Similarly for an API. If you were to design an
active model, how would you propose reconciling the method definitions in
classical repositories?

BTW. Just to clarify, I am arguing both sides of the coin here because
irrespective of what we do, we will need to have answers for all of these.
The more accurately the requirements doc reflects these concerns, the better
off we will be later.

regards,

-Walter

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andrea Westerinen [mailto:andreawest@mindspring.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2000 8:02 PM
> To: Weiss, Walter; nim@ops.ietf.org
> Subject: RE: Methods in the NIM requirements
> 
> 
> <snip>
> 
> > > <Andrea> I do not understand the argument of having ONLY 
> attributes in a
> > > class definition and then hoping that some behavior 
> happens.  Is the
> goal to
> > > define an "object's" attributes and a "do something" bit? 
>   IE, when I
> set
> > > the attributes and then hit "go", the right stuff 
> happens? This seems a
> > > formula for disaster and proprietary/unpredictable behavior.
> > >
> > Andrea,
> > You raise an interesting point:
> > Should the semantics of "go" be in the model? If we look at 
> many of the
> > models out there today, all have "go" semantics. However, 
> most are in the
> > protocol itself. The SET command is part of SNMP, not the MIB.
> > Similarly for COPS and LDAP.
> >
> > regards,
> > -Walter
> 
> Let me be clear.  Putting a "go" attribute in the model would 
> be wrong from
> an object modeling and a formal "declaration" perspective.  I 
> would like to
> see specific behavior specifically modeled as methods.  I 
> would prefer that
> get/set (read/write) be handled in the protocol(s) with only the
> characteristics (constraints) of whether read/write are  
> "supported" in the
> model.
> 
> Andrea
>