RE: Meeting Minutes for the SMIng WG at the 49th IETF...

["Durham, David" <david.durham@intel.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: rpresuhn-lists@dorothy.bmc.com
> > Subject: Meeting Minutes for the SMIng WG at the 49th IETF...
> > Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2000 22:12:30 -0800
> ..
> 
> I think some bits got dropped:
> 
[Dave] Uh oh... 

> > Randy: Partial implementation of a class seems odd. There 
> may be a semantic
> > for the class that implies all the attributes are to be 
> used. Maybe this
> > comes from the CMIP world. CMIP allows partial inheritance 
> as a partial
> > implementation of a class. 
> ..
> 
> GDMO (CMIP's object definition language) supports multiple,
> not partial, inheritance.  My point was that if attributes
> have been bundled in a class, there must be some underlying
> semantic that motivates this bundling.  To then "partially
> inherit" from that class risks breaking whatever semantic
> it was that led to the creation of the class in the first
> place.
> 
> GDMO's way of handling multiple inheritance and packages
> allows one to attain the same objectives without bastardizing
> OO modeling with the kind of partial inheritance that's being
> introduced here.

[Dave] Hummm, I don't think I should use the word bastardizing in the
minutes, but I will correct the attribution.  Are you suggesting that a
partial implements (rather than partial inheritance) of a class is always
wrong, or merely that it could simply be abused? What if some of the
attributes in a class are considered optional, must they still always be
implemented in an SNMP table?