Subject: A question for the group...

From: Al Bergstein <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 15:14:36 -0800

Somehow I remember seeing something on this, but can't find it in the
archives (maybe I'm not looking hard enough).  I haven't seen anyone post
from MS,so I assume we are not engaged in this effort, though I'm somewhat
surprised that we don't appear to be. I'll ask on our behalf.

My question: 

While I have followed this discussion over the last months, and believe you
have done good work on this, I'm interested in the group's thoughts on WMI
and how it might relate to your emerging standard. I totally understand the
thoughts that went into  support for the SMI protocol, given that it is the
most widely used method for surfacing events today. I'm also sure that many
of you have at least known about Microsoft's work around WMI (for WBEM
implementation on Windows) and the Sun's use of the DMTF's WBEM . What I'm
curious about is your thoughts on where  the future intersection of your
work and WBEM come together. 

Quick background: Microsoft has currently instrumented a great deal of
Windows 2000 with WMI. More work is continuing in the next release of
Windows, along with many of our application groups who are  doing additional
work using WMI. In addition, we have demonstrated interop with Sun as far
back as fall of 1999, if I remember right. 

Sun has done some work on Solaris 8 with WMI. I assume more will follow. 

Is the assumption of the group that, since "hardware" based vendors (I use
that term here loosely, so be gentle - :) are not yet using WMI, that the
group will do this work now with a "revision" to the proposed standard at
some time down the road, if it starts to happen? Or that WMI based
management environments will somehow consume the XML messages into their
management consoles,and that issue will be figured out later by this group
or by companies like ours in the forums like the DMTF?

I would assume that the DMTF would want to be working on this also, since on
their web site (http://www.dmtf.org/spec/wbem.html) they state: 
The CIM specification is the language and methodology for describing
management data. The CIM schema includes models for Systems, Applications,
Networks (LAN) and Devices. 

Hope this is question is clear. I'm more than willing to take feedback
offline, if you feel that it's too off base for this discussion group.

Sincerely, 

Al Bergstein
Technical Evangelist
Data Center 
Microsoft Corporation

The views expressed here are entirely my own, and somewhat represent
Microsoft's...(G)

---

From: Stuart Staniford <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 17:16:08 -0800

> surprised that we don't appear to be. I'll ask on our behalf.

Hi Al:

Welcome!  I believe I have occasionally seen Microsoft folks at IDWG
meetings, but I can't recall anyone from Microsoft making any technical
input to the group before now.

> most widely used method for surfacing events today. 

It's not clear that we are supporting SMI to any significant extent.  Glenn
Mansfield has written documents about it, but the working group has taken
no action on them, and the view of the chairs is that they need review from
a broader group of people before it would be reasonable to consider taking
any such action.  The main working group documents are the requirements
doc, the data model/ XML DTD document, and the transport document (though
that last is now uncertain given the WG consensus at the last meeting to
investigate BEEP).

I'm also sure that many
> work and WBEM come together.

The issue hasn't been raised before.  We have no thinking on it at
present.  Basically, we haven't, to date, gotten much significant input
from OS folks, but only intrusion detection folks.

What do you think we should do?

Stuart.

-- 
Stuart Staniford  ---  President  ---  Silicon Defense
[email-masked]  http://www.silicondefense.com/
(707) 445-4355                     (707) 445-4222 (FAX)