I'm not coming at the problem from a DPA perspective, necessarily. I am seeking
a collection of definitions, protocols, attributes and conventions who's roles
and interaction provide a solution for print service discovery, capabilities
matching, submission, monitoring, accounting and asset control that are not
vastly different for each platform or operating environment.
I lobbied for concise division of labor when IPP was in early development. "Mind
the printer MIB ... the Job MIB..." I argued that IPP should be the standard job
SUBMISSION protocol to complement our existing infrastructure! A strong distaste
for SNMP overshadowed the conversation as a subset of Printer MIB was chiseled
into IPP. I adjusted my attitude to acknowledge the inevitable and focused (with
a great deal of help from Tom) on compatibility with the Job MIB.
In light of our history... issues related to division of labor sound familiar
but futile. IPP is, after all, already a collection of this and that. And, as a
submission and job management protocol, I certainly don't see a problem adding
operator features.
What I find most interesting is the opportunity to sort through alternatives.
I'm not suggesting the PWG must "drive" every aspect of the overall print
solution, but, where there are alternatives (CIM vs. IPP extensions vs. SNMP,
for example), I think the PWG should have a high level framework to test the
ideas and couple the options into a cross platform roadmap.
Harry Lewis
IBM Printing Systems
harryl at us.ibm.com
Ira McDonald <imcdonal at sdsp.mc.xerox.com> on 06/28/99 01:22:36 PM
To: carl at manros.com, Harry Lewis/Boulder/IBM at IBMUS
cc: HPARRA at novell.com, PETER_E_MELLQUIST at hp-roseville-om3.om.hp.com,
bwagner at digprod.com, hastings at cp10.es.xerox.com, ipp at pwg.org,
kjo at ess.mc.xerox.com, Carl Kugler/Boulder/IBM at IBMUS
Subject: RE: IPP> Re:Goals behind IPP 1.1 printer mgmt
Hi Harry,
I'm not too sure where you're leading. Are supporting the addition of
the rest of the base DPA system admin operations to IPP or not?
Re SNMP over IP - of course, it runs over lots of other network
protocols. IPP on the other hand, runs on HTTP *only* and therefore
on IP *only*. It's the very fact that the Printer MIB is useful
w/ SNMP over AppleTalk and SNMP over NetWare as well as Internet
suite that makes it powerful.
As long as an asymmetric session protocol (HTTP) is used to
transport IPP, we're going to have extra problems trying
to get notifications 'in-band' for IPP. SNMP is deployed.
SMTP email is deployed. HTTP 'mini-servers' on every
desktop are NOT deployed (or likely to be).
My Vote - Add the proposed system admin operations (all from
DPA Part 3, System Admin in my copy, except 'CancelThisJob'
which may be a loose cannon as an operation) to IPP. And
do it promptly before too many proprietary alternatives
get implemented by various printer and software vendors.
Cheers,
- Ira McDonald