Subject: AgentX Session

From: "Ashish Hanwadikar" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1998 10:34:06 +0530

Hi,
	We are trying to implement AgentX Master Agent. During design discussions
the question came as what exactly is importance of AgentX Sessions? What is
the benefit of having multiple AgentX Sessions on the top of Transport
connections? It is making things slight complicated for the implementation?
Will the thing become simplified if we have only one session per transport
connection? I could make out how multiple sessions will help either the
master agent or the sub agent developer and in what situation it will make
sense?
	Maybe I am asking a very preliminary question!
	Thanks in advance.

Ashish K Hanwadikar
Senior Software Engineer,
Wipro Infotech, Technology Solutions,
Bangalore
INDIA

---

From: Randy Presuhn <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 1998 09:35:16 -0700 (PDT)

Hi - 

> From: "Ashish Hanwadikar" <[email-masked]>
> To: "Agentx" <[email-masked]>
> Subject: AgentX Session
> Date: Mon, 7 Sep 1998 10:34:06 +0530
...
> the question came as what exactly is importance of AgentX Sessions?

They are a mandatory element of the protocol as defined by RFC 2257.

>                                                                     What is
> connections? 

Simplifies "cascading" subagents (not an explicit design goal) on
systems severely limiting the number of open sockets per process.
For more history, see RFC 1592 clause 2.1, DPIv2.

>              It is making things slight complicated for the implementation?

I don't think so.  There are other good design reasons for an
implementation to distinguish connection state from session state,
particularly if you plan to support transports beyond just TCP.

> connection? 

It would mean that your implementation would not be able to interoperate
with some subagents developed in conformance to the specification.

>             I could make out how multiple sessions will help either the
...

The capability is primarily of value to a subagent developer.  See above.
Note that there has been some talk of dropping this capability.

 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
 Randy Presuhn           Email: [email-masked]      http://www.bmc.com     
 Voice: +1 408 616-3100  BMC Software, Inc.           965 Stewart Drive
 Fax:   +1 408 616-3101  Sunnyvale, California 94086  USA
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
 In accordance with the BMC Communications Systems Use and Security
 Policy, I explicitly state that although my affiliation with BMC may be
 apparent, implied, or provided, my opinions are not necessarily those
 of BMC Software and that all external representations on behalf of
 BMC must first be cleared with a member of "the top management team."
 -----------------------------------------------------------------------