First, I'm delighted to hear that Ricoh is implementing the new CIM Printer model. Your implementation experience will be very valuable in discovering where the specs need tightening in a printer profile. Please let us keep discussing any questions you have as you develop the implementation.
Where to put vendor name? Well, in the prototype proxy provider that I'm writing, I chose to use the CIM_Printer.Caption and CIM_Printer.Description properties to convey this information. The best I can do as a proxy is to insert the sysDescr string into these properties. Since you can write these properties directly, you can provide both a long and short description if you wish.
CIM_Printer.Name should be reserved for an administratively assigned name, such as IP name.
Yes, you can subclass from CIM_Printer. Agreed, you cannot change the inheritance hierarchy of any of the classes, but you can always create a specialized subclass if you wish, to extend properties or simply to avoid namespace conflicts in the CIMOM.
You're quite right that the CIM_Printer.CreationClassName must contain the precise classname of the instance.
Keep the questions coming. We need to collect just this sort of info for the profile we still have to write. If you have a chance, take a look at the choices made in the proxy provider, and, if you don't agree with them, please suggest better contents for the properties.
rick
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-wims at pwg.org [mailto:owner-wims at pwg.org] On Behalf Of konstantin.vorobyev at nts.ricoh.co.jp
Sent: Tuesday, December 02, 2008 01:30
To: blueroofmusic at gmail.com
Cc: wims at pwg.org
Subject: Re: WIMS> Vendor information in CIM_Printer
Dear Ira,
Thank you very much for your prompt reply.
As far as I know we can't and we shouldn't extend any of CIM_Printer superclasses (like CIM_LogicalDevice, CIM_ManagedElement etc.) since we will break CIM_Printer's inheritance chain (superclass of CIM_Printer will be different). According to this we have no other ways but extend CIM_Printer. So, we are going to create a subclass of CIM_Printer (in new namespace, like Ricoh_Printer) and add some fields, including VendorName.
Related to CIM_LogicalDevice.CreationClassName, as far as I know, we should put exact object's class name into this, like ("CIM_Printer"), and I'm not sure that we can put vendor's information here.
If you have any comments or suggestions your help is greatly appreciated!
Best regards,
Konstantin Vorobyev, RICOH COMPANY, LTD.
"Ira
McDonald"
<blueroofm 宛先
usic at gmail Konstantin Vorobyev/R/RICOH at RICOH, "Ira
.com> McDonald" <blueroofmusic at gmail.com>,
送信者: "Richard Landau"
owner-wims <Richard_Landau at dell.com>
@pwg.org cc
wims at pwg.org
件名
12/02/2008 Re: WIMS> Vendor information in
11:18 AM CIM_Printer
Hi Konstantin,
WONDERFUL NEWS that Ricoh is implementing the CIM Printer classes!
- more on this topic later in this note.
Apologies for my delayed response - traveling since last Wednesday.
Sadly, there is NOT a property for Vendor Name, because the CIM Printer classes are derived *directly* from the Printer MIB v2 (RFC 3805) which does not have such a property (prtInputVendorName was not modelled in the CIM_PrintInputTray class because it is NOT widely correctly implemented).
In MIBs, Vendor Name belongs as part of sysDescr in MIB-II (RFC 1213).
I can't find this in existing CIM classes either (odd?).
However, in order to add vendor-specific properties, you will probably subclass the standard classes, in which case vendor name WILL be explicit in the CIM_LogicalDevice.CreationClassName property - Rick Landau (Dell, CIM Core co-chair) assures us that this subclassing is typical across most CIM implementations.
The Ricoh implementation, along with Rick Landau's complete prototype of all CIM Printer classes (now nearing completion) will satisfy the CIM rule that two independent implementations are required to move a new class (or new property) from CIM Experimental (backwards compatibility NOT guaranteed) to CIM Final (stable and backwards compatible).
We will talk about this (Ricoh and Dell implementations) during this week's PWG Face-to-Face here at Samsung in Irvine, CA on Thursday.
Please feel free to ask any questions - as co-editor with Rick Landau of the CIM Printer classes, I'm *very* interested in helping implementors.
Cheers,
- Ira
PS - Rick may have better advice, but he's at *another* conference all this week and on vacation the rest of the year - but I'll leave him voice mail on his cell phone.
Ira McDonald (Musician / Software Architect) Chair - Linux Foundation Open Printing WG Blue Roof Music/High North Inc
email: blueroofmusic at gmail.com
winter:
579 Park Place Saline, MI 48176
734-944-0094
summer:
PO Box 221 Grand Marais, MI 49839
906-494-2434
On Fri, Nov 28, 2008 at 4:11 AM, <konstantin.vorobyev at nts.ricoh.co.jp>
wrote:
> Dear PWG members,
>> Well, I have one question related to CIM_Printer class, and hope this
> mailing list is the best place for that.
>> Currently we use the latest version of CIM scheme, 2.19.1, and among
other
> information about printer we need to provide vendor's name, like "Ricoh"
> etc. But it seems there no such property in current CIM_Printer class
> as well as in all it's superclasses.
> How should we add such information? Should we create new class by
extending
> CIM_Printer class, or use some existing property, like Name, Caption
> or
so?
>> Thank you very much in advance,
>> Best regards, Konstantin Vorobyev, RICOH COMPANY, LTD.
>>