Re: Whitepaper on XML-based Network Management

[Jon Saperia <saperia@jdscons.com>]

> Mon, Jul 30, 2001 at 04:22:08PM -0400, Phil Shafer:
> > - Expect is the tool of choice for a large number of tasks, but
> > the lack of control and variability of the responses mean that scripts
> > are too fragile and maintenance costs are too large.
> 
> and the language (or rather the underlying language) is exceedingly fragile
> and obtuse!
> 
> > Most of the customers I've talked with have their own tools group;
> > most avoid commercial tools because of version and feature lag. They
> 
> and most of these vendors totally miss the target.
> 
> we are very excited about XML configuration, flexibility, etc.  i do not
> see XML replacing snmp for statistical data collection.
> 
> 

While we may differ a bit on using XML to transport the data, I think a
representation at the router (and in other places of XML) is good
because of the 'standardization' across vendors that 'could' be
accomplished. The point of my previous and this note is that to the
extent you have XML and SNMP and any other mixture of environments for
data collection of say interface counters and faults you have an
integration problem. The faults and accounting/performance data need to
be understood in the context of the configuration. Again, this may be
declared outside the scope of the work but thinking about this now -
perhaps as part of the DTD would be helpful. Bottom line think of your
network operations center folk.

Thanks,
/jon
--

Jon Saperia		     saperia@jdscons.com
			     Phone: 617-744-1079
			     Fax:   617-249-0874
			     http://www.jdscons.com/