Re: Returning zero or empty string for unsupported objects

["Randy Presuhn" <randy_presuhn@mindspring.com>]

Hi -

> From: "Wijnen, Bert (Bert)" <bwijnen@lucent.com>
> To: "Andy Bierman" <abierman@cisco.com>
> Cc: "Mreview (E-mail)" <mreview@ops.ietf.org>
> Sent: Friday, November 07, 2003 4:58 PM
> Subject: RE: Returning zero or empty string for unsupported objects
...
> yes yes I know. I am trying to locate as much text in RFCs that spells
> that out.
...

How about RFC 2580 clause 3 second paragraph? It says:

   To "implement" an object, an agent must return a reasonably accurate
   value for management protocol retrieval operations; similarly, if the
   object is writable, then in response to a management protocol set
   operation, an agent must accordingly be able to reasonably influence
   the underlying managed entity.  If an agent can not implement an
   object, the management protocol provides for it to return an
   exception or error, e.g, noSuchObject [4].  Under no circumstances
   shall an agent return a value for objects which it does not implement
   -- it must always return the appropriate exception or error, as
   described in the protocol specification [4].

Randy