Re: draft minutes from the sming interim:

[Andy Bierman <abierman@cisco.com>]

At 01:18 AM 6/29/2002, Frank Strauss wrote:
>Hi!
>
>David> [...] a well defined and standard annotation mechanism as
>David> part of the language is really very useful. There are several
>David> examples of the annotation that exist in commercial products
>David> such as the MIB compiler from Epilogue (WindRiver) to assist
>David> in generation of code for SNMP agents, and from Novell and HP
>David> to provide additional information about notifications.
>>> 
>>> I agree.
>
>Andy> I'm not disagreeing that MIB compiler writers may want to add
>Andy> directives to MIB modules to assist in the generation of output
>Andy> documents.  I'm concerned that such an effort is inappropriate
>Andy> wrt/ the charter of the SMIng WG.  I'm concerned that it will
>Andy> require a lengthy effort, interesting to a small number of
>Andy> people, to agree on the syntax and semantics of these
>Andy> directives.
>
>There is no need to agree on specific directives. Just the way,
>annotations are support, would have to be discussed.
>
>Andy> I'm concerned that these directives are not universally useful,
>Andy> but rather specific to particular tools and vendors.  MIB
>Andy> readers want to view MIBs in a consistent format.  The WG
>Andy> already decided not to pursue compiler directives (in SLC).
>
>What I have in mind is RFC 3216, 4.1.6. The way the NMRG proposal
>supports language extensions doesn't break the compatibility of
>parsers that don't support these extensions. 

The issue is the impact on MIB readers, not MIB compiler writers.
The WG decided (more than once) that user extensions to the SMI
would diminish a MIB reader's ability to pick up any MIB document
and fully understand the constructs used in that MIB.


> -frank (still confused why we move in circles concerning accepted
>         and rejected `objectives') 

Andy