Subject: Re: <draft-ietf-disman-event-mib-09.txt>

From: Randy Presuhn <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 6 Jan 2000 16:50:33 -0800 (PST)

Hi -

> Message-Id: <[email-masked]>
> Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2000 14:48:11 -0800
> To: Randy Presuhn <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
> From: Ramanathan Kavasseri <[email-masked]>
> Subject: Re:  <draft-ietf-disman-event-mib-09.txt>
> In-Reply-To: <[email-masked]>
...
> >> Adding a "MIN-ACCESS read-only" clause in the compliance statement
> >> would let the DISMAN-EVENT-MIB _implementation_ specify the 
> >> mteResourceSampleMinimum and mteResourceSampleInstanceMaximum
> >> values, instead of allowing the _user_ to specify them.
> >
> >I think the current object definitions already cover
> >this, where it has words to the effect "A system may use
> >the larger values of this minimum to lessen the impact of
> >constant sampling."  No matter what the user asks for, the
> >implementation can impose any lower bound it wants.
> 
> I agree. Since the choice is left to the implementation to
> choose a "saner" value, we should leave this as is...

so far, so good.

> Also you can still implement the object as read-only, and supply 
> a CAPABILITY MIB indicating that it is a read-only implementation, right?
...

Thin ice.  The AGENT-CAPABILITIES macro lets the implementor
describe what has been implemented.  However, that does
NOT by itself make the implementation conformant.  If the
MIB definition says read-write, and does not qualify that
statement in the statement of conformance requirements
(MODULE-COMPLIANCE MIN-ACCESS), and the implementation is
incapable of handling a SetRequest for an instance of that
object, then that implementation does not conform to that
MIB specification.  It may still be a useful implementation,
but it's not conformant, no matter what the AGENT-CAPABILITIES
macro says.

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 Randy Presuhn           [email-masked]       http://www.bmc.com/
 Voice: +1 408 546-1006  BMC Software, Inc.  1-3141  2141 N. First Street
 Fax:   +1 408 965-0359  San Jose, California 95131  USA
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