Hi Harry,
I agree with Bill that extensions to the device monitoring/management
semantics of the Printer MIB would work best if they were defined in
_both_ XML and ASN.1 format, given the ubiquity of SNMP-based products
and the fragmented deployment of all the other "next new thing" mgmt
standards.
Remember that with XML and SOAP one can read a few or as many elements
from the mapped Printer MIB as needed.
I certainly think that defining new summarization and ease-of-access
elements to extend Printer MIB is a good idea.
Cheers,
- Ira
Ira McDonald (Musician / Software Architect)
Blue Roof Music / High North Inc
PO Box 221 Grand Marais, MI 49839
phone: +1-906-494-2434
email: imcdonald at sharplabs.com
-----Original Message-----
From: Wagner,William [mailto:WWagner at NetSilicon.com]
Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2003 6:35 PM
To: Harry Lewis; imcdonald at sharplabs.com
Cc: wbmm at pwg.org
Subject: RE: WBMM> Printer MIB
Harry,
A very timely comment since we have previously discussed augmenting the
printer MIB with the additional objects reflecting the current and
anticipated variables of interest. This would be done within the PWG,
although it is unclear if it should be within WBMM or some other group. The
augmenting objects would be reflected as additonal elements in the XML
coding.
Indeed, in last weeks meeting the suggestion was to solicit members on what
varaibles, that may not exist in private mibs, should be standardized.
Color usage is certainly one of them.
Because, for the forseeable future, intra enterprise management will still
be done with SNMP, I beleive that we should attempt to define these new
variables in both ASN.1 and XML form. The idea of using the multiple markers
approach was mentioned, but thought too cumbersome and not technically
correct in some configurations. Augmentation of the standard MIB would allow
a rreasonable representation.
This should be a continuing topic on our weekly conference calls, and we
should seek to broaden the audience.
Talk with you tomorrow.
Bill Wagner
Original Message-----
From: Harry Lewis [mailto:harryl at us.ibm.com]
Sent: Tue 10/28/2003 4:56 PM
To: imcdonald at sharplabs.com
Cc: wbmm at pwg.org
Subject: WBMM> Printer MIB
Ira, a few comments that I've been wanting to surface regarding the
SNMP printer MIB mapping.
You probably realize, I haven't been as large a proponent of
preserving consistency for the sake of large enterprise apps as you have...
but I've welcomed the mechanical mapping because
1. You were willing to do it
2. We need a mapping of the Printer MIB to XML to at least serve as
basis for our semantic modeling
3. It is possible that the resulting 1-to-1 mapping will be ideal
for WBMM (but I have my doubts)
An example of an area where I'm not sure the straightforward mapping
will serve well is in the Marker/MarkerSupplies/Colorant tables.
An important goal of WBMM will be accurate mark counts on a per
color basis. I believe this is achievable with the printer MIB but at the
expense of several layers of indexing. I would hope we can represent this in
a cleaner fashion in WBMM.
Ultimately, I believe an extension to the PWG semantic model for
device management with clean mapping to SNMP Printer MIB, DMTF CIM Printer,
NPAP etc. is the ultimate goal.
----------------------------------------------
Harry Lewis
Chairman - IEEE-ISTO Printer Working Group
http://www.pwg.org
IBM Printing Systems
http://www.ibm.com/printers
303-924-5337
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