Harry,
A very timely comment since we have previously discussed augmenting the printer MIB with the additional objects reflecting the current and anticipated variables of interest. This would be done within the PWG, although it is unclear if it should be within WBMM or some other group. The augmenting objects would be reflected as additonal elements in the XML coding.
Indeed, in last weeks meeting the suggestion was to solicit members on what varaibles, that may not exist in private mibs, should be standardized. Color usage is certainly one of them.
Because, for the forseeable future, intra enterprise management will still be done with SNMP, I beleive that we should attempt to define these new variables in both ASN.1 and XML form. The idea of using the multiple markers approach was mentioned, but thought too cumbersome and not technically correct in some configurations. Augmentation of the standard MIB would allow a rreasonable representation.
This should be a continuing topic on our weekly conference calls, and we should seek to broaden the audience.
Talk with you tomorrow.
Bill Wagner
Original Message-----
From: Harry Lewis [mailto:harryl at us.ibm.com]
Sent: Tue 10/28/2003 4:56 PM
To: imcdonald at sharplabs.com
Cc: wbmm at pwg.org
Subject: WBMM> Printer MIB
Ira, a few comments that I've been wanting to surface regarding the SNMP printer MIB mapping.
You probably realize, I haven't been as large a proponent of preserving consistency for the sake of large enterprise apps as you have... but I've welcomed the mechanical mapping because
1. You were willing to do it
2. We need a mapping of the Printer MIB to XML to at least serve as basis for our semantic modeling
3. It is possible that the resulting 1-to-1 mapping will be ideal for WBMM (but I have my doubts)
An example of an area where I'm not sure the straightforward mapping will serve well is in the Marker/MarkerSupplies/Colorant tables.
An important goal of WBMM will be accurate mark counts on a per color basis. I believe this is achievable with the printer MIB but at the expense of several layers of indexing. I would hope we can represent this in a cleaner fashion in WBMM.
Ultimately, I believe an extension to the PWG semantic model for device management with clean mapping to SNMP Printer MIB, DMTF CIM Printer, NPAP etc. is the ultimate goal.
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Harry Lewis
Chairman - IEEE-ISTO Printer Working Group
http://www.pwg.org
IBM Printing Systems
http://www.ibm.com/printers
303-924-5337
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