Re: terminology challenge

[Juergen Schoenwaelder <schoenw@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de>]

>>>>> Randy Presuhn writes:

Randy> Though that's important, that's not what concerns me.

Randy> What DOES concern me is modeling containment in a reasonable
Randy> way.  GDMO / CMIP did this (though I think name bindings were
Randy> far more powerful than they needed to be).  I don't see how the
Randy> SMING SNMP mapping addresses this, except for a degenerate
Randy> scalar example.  (Perhaps I'm missing something, or perhaps
Randy> it's just not there.)  Some of the drafts seem to conflate
Randy> containment with the concepts of inheritance and how object
Randy> classes come to have attributes, but they don't seem to
Randy> squarely address the question of where instances of the same
Randy> class might be contained (named by) instances of different
Randy> classes.  (Slightly contrived example: data store for a
Randy> database might be contained by a file, RAM, or a raw
Randy> partition.)

Now I see what you are talking about. We have two uses of the word
"containment" and this causes confusion. I read your containment
more or less as it is used in RFC 3216 section 4.1.28:

4.1.28 Containment

   Type: new

   From: NMRG

   Description: SMIng must provide support for the creation of new
      attribute groups from attributes of more basic types and
      potentially other attribute groups.

   Motivation: Simplifies the reuse of attribute groups such as
      InetAddressType and InetAddress pairs.

   Notes: Containment has the implicit existence constraint that if an
      instance of a contained attribute group exists, then the
      corresponding instance of the containing attribute group must
      also
      exist.

You are using "containment" while talking about modeling "contained
in" relationships - which I think CMIP name bindings are doing. How
important do you think modeling "contained in" relationships really
is? And do we need special language constructs for modeling this
particular relationship?

I think even the CIM modelers do not have language support for
"contained in" relationships - CIM folks, please speak up if I am
wrong.

/js