I certainly agree that the Concepts of "Chosen" and "Declared" leave
a lot of room for improvement. In implementing the Printer MIB, prior
to my involvement with the PWG, I could not understand why the need to
differentiate between the two values. As a result, the Dataproducts
implementation always returns the same value for both objects.
Jay, I agree with your conclusion that management apps are not likely
to take advantage of this mechanism and a deprecation in this area
is easily justified.
...Ron
At 18:13:26, Fri Mar 07 1997 JK Martin wrote:
Harry,
After reading your message, I think our ship has just scraped the
veritable tip of the bloody iceberg...
The concepts of "Chosen" and "Declared" have got to be some of the most
obtuse aspects of the Printer MIB. (I won't go into the definitions
here, though; please see the MIB for pure S&M delight...)
As I recall, "Chosen" and "Declared" were SUPPOSED to be used for
configuration-oriented applications (ie, either mgmt apps or very
intelligent drivers).
The point is, are there ANY apps out there that actually take advantage
of this bizarre mechanism? (I'll bet the answer is "No") Are there
any vendors with work in process that will use this mechanism? (Again,
the money is on "No")
I'll bet that most--if not ALL--network printer vendors have completely
shifted their focus on configuration practices from raw SNMP to straight
up HTTP/HTML via standard web browser technologies.
As such, the use of "Chosen" and "Declared" by mgmt apps will probably
never see the light of day.
If this is true, then let's deprecate it. Moreover, if what I have said
about the focus on HTTP/HTML is true, then there are probably MANY other
similar MIB objects that can also be deprecated.
We would be *very* interested in hearing others' opinions on this.
...jay
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----- Begin Included Message -----
Date: Fri, 7 Mar 97 13:51:39 MST
From: "Harry Lewis <harryl@vnet.ibm.com>" <harryl@vnet.IBM.COM>
To: pmp@pwg.org
Subject: PMP> prtInputMedia...Dims
We went over this in the call, and I don't think there were any cases where
Declared and Chosen really differed. What we didn't cover, however, is
how many vendors implemented Declared as r/w vs. how many just map the
Chosen value into the Declared?
Isn't this important interop info? I don't know why a "show of hands"
wouldn't suffice, here.
Harry Lewis
----- End Included Message -----