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Re: Compliance Statements

At 12:36 PM 2/15/2003 -0800, C. M. Heard wrote:
>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?

This will make M-Cs extremely verbose and a lot of work to create.
It would be better to create these verbose OBJECT clauses only
when the enum list is extended, when you know for sure the
OBJECT clause is needed.  This can go in a new deprecated M-C,
at the same time you create a new current M-C.


>//cmh

Andy