Re: Compliance Statements

["C. M. Heard" <heard@pobox.com>]

On Fri, 14 Feb 2003, C. M. Heard wrote:
> > On Fri, 14 Feb 2003, Wijnen, Bert (Bert) wrote:
> > 
> > - page 25 2nd bullet
> >   I actually wonder if it would not be better if people did
> >   list all the enumerations at the first revision of a MIB
> >   and the compliance statements. That way... it is clear
> >   from the beginning what it is that one can expect.
> > 
> >   Of course some enumerations do not need that, because they
> >   are [not] intended to be extended, and that is OK.
> 
> I think RFC 2580 already says that.  [ ... ]  I will have some other
> stuff that I need to do today so I will have to follow up on this
> later.

It turns out that RFC 2580 does have this advice for agent-caps
statements (it is in the last paragraph of Section 6.5.2.1), but
it has no similar advice for compliance statements.  So, I guess
it would indeed be a good idea to add something to this effect
to Section 4.8 of the guidelines.  Here is what I come up with:

   Even in a compliance statements where all values are required to be
   supported, it is RECOMMENDED that an OBJECT clause listing all
   enumerations be provided for each writeable object of enumerated
   INTEGER or BITS type if the set of named numbers or named bits might
   be expanded in a future revision of the MIB module.  Doing so will
   ensure that the meaning of the compliance statement remains unchanged 
   even after such a revision.  This is not necessary, of course, for
   objects that are not required to be writeable nor for objects whose 
   value set will remain unchanged when the MIB module is revised.

Comments?

//cmh