Subject: [OPS-AREA] Converting SNMP MIBs to SOA/Web Services Management Artifacts - API vs Data Models

From: "Natale, Bob" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2007 00:51:57 -0500

Hi Andy,

I've started a new thread on this topic raised by your comment on the
previous thread:
"I am not convinced that constraining any new high-level API for the
sake of SNMP Proxy would be a popular decision."

To be clear about the primary objectives I have in mind for the
proposed effort:

- To make the existing (and future) body of SNMP MIB data models, and
consequently the instrumentation implementing them, more readily usable
by the emerging breed of SOA/Web Services management tools (what you
referred to as "SOA/WSDL NMS applications" in the earlier thread).

- Making the data models (in the form of XML, RDF, WSDL, SML, CML,
WS-Policy, OWL, etc...TBD by the proposed effort) available to those
management applications has value in and of itself in a number of ways,
such as:
   - Easier to form a unified view of services and the infrastructure
supporting them
   - Easier to articulate, understand, manipulate, and exploit semantic
relationships among those entities
   - Elimination of the need to understand/support ASN.1 or even the
SMIv2 directly

- Making the existing (and future) SNMP instrumentation available to
those tools -- transparently to the tools wrt SNMP and SMIv2 themselves
-- is a huge gain for:
   - The user community, through the elimination of the need for
separate management applications for services versus infrastructure
management.
   - The SOA/Web Services Management tool vendors, through the
relatively facile expansion of managed resources which will be
available to them (at comparatively little incremental development
cost).
   - The managed entity suppliers, by extending the useful lifetime of
those products (without requiring new instrumentation on those
products).
- Making this SNMP instrumentation available in this context would
almost certainly rely on a proxy model, in which the proxy would use
the SOA/WS stuff on one side and handle the SNMP interactions on the
other, ideally in a many-to-many arrangement.

All of that, in my view, happens w/o developing APIs...rather by
standardizing the methodology for converting SNMP MIBs to SOA/WS
management artifacts.  That APIs can be layered on the effort to
deliver even more value is beyond question -- I just don't see it as a
prerequisite for delivering the kinds of value I outlined above.  I
would like to know your thoughts on that perspective and to better
understand your own views.

(By the way, I personally have a huge user community in mind that needs
this solution...but I suspect it will have very broad appeal.  Current
SNMP-only management application vendors might feel a bit threatened by
it, but I think the writing is on the wall on that one...and they might
be prime candidates to provide the proxy entities, if they want to
compete in that space.  Disclaimer: I personally no longer have any
involvement in the management product business, of any kind -- I am
strictly a trusted advisor to a large user community.)

Cheers,
BobN

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From: Mark Ellison <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 02 Mar 2007 11:16:31 -0500

Hi Bob,

I enjoyed this initial draft.

There were some typos on p5 pp3 (Explanation), 6th line - s/ANS/ASN/
Also, there are some errant blanks after words before punctuation.
Also, lower on p5, the third bullet, first line-  s/of and/of/

Here are your reference citations from WSDM MUWS:

[MUWSp1] Bullard, V., et al, "Web Services Distributed 
Management:Management using Web Services (MUWS 1.1) Part 1", OASIS 
Standard, August 2006, 
http://docs.oasis-open.org/wsdm/wsdm-muws2-1.1-spec-os-01.pdf

[MUWSp2]  Bullard, V., et al, "Web Services Distributed 
Management:Management using Web Services (MUWS 1.1) Part 2", OASIS 
Standard, August 2006, 
http://docs.oasis-open.org/wsdm/wsdm-muws2-1.1-spec-os-01.pdf

I'll look for your next revision.

Regards,

Mark

Natale, Bob wrote:
> Hi,
>  
> [Rushing out to a meeting....]
>  
> Just in case people did not catch the announcement, the following I-D 
> was posted for the Prague mini-BOF indicated below:
> "Converting SNMP MIBs to SOA/Web Services Management Artifacts",
> http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-natale-snmp-mibs-to-ontology-00.txt.
>  
> This topic is considerably broader than the MIB-to-XML work proposed 
> by Emile, but (while a primary purpose of the BOF and the WG it 
> proposes is to identify the right set of artifacts) it is almost 
> certain that correct and efficient XML encoding of MIBs will be at the 
> basis of the desired artifacts, so it is good that we are having that 
> discussion (and that Emile's BOF presentation precedes this one on the 
> agenda).
>  
> Meeting 2 - Thursday March 22, 2007 - 9:00 to 11:30AM
> ...
> 5. Mini-BOF G: OWL techniques for MIB to XML documents and schema
> translation - Bob Natale (total: 40 min)
>  
> Specification of a standard methodology for translating SNMP MIBs into
> outputs more directly usable by emerging SOA/web services management
> tools, and specification of a standard methodology for validating those
> translations.  Appropriate translation outputs are TBD by the WG, but
> can be expected to include one or more of the following: XML, RDF, WSDL,
> WS-Policy, WS-Event/Notification, Ontology.  The translation output(s)
> should allow for extension of the respective managed element data model
> in the native SOA/web services environment.  Because of the
> extensibility objective, reverse translation back into SNMP MIB format
> is a non-goal of the WG, but the possibility should be considered when
> weighing alternatives.
>  
> Cheers,
> BobN
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>