Cathy,
Certainly an interesting twist. Coming up with a replacement for SNMP and MIBs is a task of major proportions. Of course, any document may be interpreted to mean something far beyond was was intended by the writer. Although the charter draft does not exclude developing an SNMP replacement, the document does stress both by the examples and the priorities the idea of remote management. And two of the three initial examples are for extra-enterprise access. That is not to say that an SNMP replacement should not be considered, if the need can be established.
But if you see a need to replace SNMP, I do refer you to the DTMF site http://www.dmtf.org/standards/ which has developed WEBM (Web Base Management) which expresses CIM, an alternate management information model, in XML.
I think that if you want a replacement to SNMP and the MIBS (and I personally do not think that this is necessary), the DMTF work is the place to start. Indeed, I think that much of what they have done is applicable to WBMM. What the DTMF work does not appear to have addressed is the communication of management information outside the firewall to supply, service and leasing companies that are not part of the enterprise. And the reason may well be that the driving need for remote management is a different application that usually is not interested in the details of local management but in a different class of interaction. The point was made that this level of interaction may also be local, and we should therefore consider manger-initiated contact as well as the service or device initiated contact that would characterize firewall addressing solutions.
The pressing need that needs to be addressed is concerned with communicating the information that already exists, whether it be in a MIB, a MIF, a web page or whatever. Although we may decide that we want to go on to define a new management information model, that that was not the intent of the charter. Indeed, we will have failed if we do not define a communication method that deal with data expressed in the extant management information models.
William A. Wagner (Bill Wagner)
Director of Technology
Imaging Division
NETsilicon, Inc.
781-398-4588
-----Original Message-----
From: MARKLE,CATHY (HP-Boise,ex1) [mailto:cathy_markle at hp.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 29, 2003 11:58 AM
To: 'Harry Lewis'; Wagner,William
Cc: wbmm at pwg.org
Subject: RE: WBMM> Management Commands
I agree with what Harry is saying. I want to see us working on a replacement for SNMP and the MIB which I definitely see as being inside the scope of the charter. Doing this will give us a solution that works inside the firewall as well as outside the firewall.
Cathy Markle
-----Original Message-----
From: Harry Lewis [mailto:harryl at us.ibm.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2003 10:20 PM
To: Wagner,William
Cc: wbmm at pwg.org
Subject: RE: WBMM> Management Commands
Nothing in the charter leads me to believe my perspective on remote management to the same granularity as currently available via SNMP is excluded or out of scope. I suggest we continue to strive for consensus and make appropriate modifications or clarifications to the charter before sending out for approval.
I'd like to hear from some others.
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Harry Lewis
IBM Printing Systems
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"Wagner,William" <WWagner at NetSilicon.com>
Sent by: owner-wbmm at pwg.org
01/28/2003 04:30 PM
To: Harry Lewis/Boulder/IBM at IBMUS, <wbmm at pwg.org>
cc:
Subject: RE: WBMM> Management Commands
Harry,
Your comments reflect a different perspective on the activity, or at least on the priorities. It seems that you see the effort as a general replacement for SNMP, perhaps defining some replacement to the MIBs. What I see as the most pressing need is to provide for remote access to existing data bases, be they MIBs or the data current accessed by web pages, or some internal parameters.
I also do not see this in terms of a management station canvassing to see what device supports what. In general, I do not think that that sort of fishing would be allowed in many enterprises. Rather, I see the device being registered with the remote server to provide reposts according to some pre-arraigned agreement on what parameters would be monitored. Indeed, the idea was to define the transport and a general formal by which elements could be queried or specified. Although items such as you mention (size of media in trays) would not be excluded, it does not seem the sort of thing that would be of interest to a remote server. I will post the list of things brainstormed at the BOF.
I intended the proposed Charter to be clear that this activity was to use the path intended for web browsing to allow authorized but non-enterprise agencies to monitor (for usage information, for example) and perhaps do specific maintenance (for updates or upgrades, for example) to on-enterprise site equipment. it was not the intent that this be a general SNMP replacement. Perhaps you may want to look at the charter again before we send it out for final approval. ( I have attached the draft as modified at Maui). By the way, the title is Charter Proposal for PWG WEB-Based Monitoring and Management, hence WBMM.
Bill Wagner
-----Original Message-----
From: Harry Lewis [mailto:harryl at us.ibm.com]
Sent: Monday, January 27, 2003 2:46 PM
To: wbmm at pwg.org
Subject: WBMM> Management Commands
SNMP has GET, SET, GETBULK etc. What types of commands would we like to see in WBMM (what does WBMM stand for, anyway!?... perhaps separate discussion... aren't we forgetting the U word... "Universal Deice and Services Management")
Back to the topic...
I'm thinking we will want to improve on the interfaces and commands based on what we have learned over the years implementing the Printer MIB. Please share your thoughts. Here are some of mine. We need...
1. A way to query what attributes are settable and which are not (we learned, with SNMP, that "MaxAccess" isn't always that helpful).
2. A way to query attribute (elements?) either singularly (tell me size of media in "main" tray), in bulk (give me the "input group"), or filtered (tell me the name of each tray; tell me all trays which are loaded with transparency).
3. If we end up with mandatory and optional commands or interfaces, a way to query which are supported in a particular implementation (describe via WSIL/WSDL?).
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Harry Lewis
IBM Printing Systems
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#### Charter Proposal 2.doc has been removed from this note on January 28, 2003 by Harry Lewis
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