Subject: FW: Proposed IETF Working Group: sming

From: Lisa Rajchel <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2000 10:12:09 -0400

For your information

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From:	The IESG [SMTP:[email-masked]]
<mailto:[SMTP:[email-masked]]> 
Sent:	Friday, October 20, 2000 9:16 AM
Cc:	[email-masked] <mailto:[email-masked]> 
Subject:	Proposed IETF Working Group: sming

A new IETF working group has been proposed in the Operations and Management
Area. The IESG has not made any determination as yet.
The following Description was submitted, and is provided for informational
purposes:
Next Generation Structure of Management Informatio (sming)
----------------------------------------------------------
 
Current Status: Proposed Working Group
Description of Working Group:
This working group shall develop a standards-track specification for the
next generation data definition language for specifying network management
data.  The language will be based on the SMIng developed in the IRTF Network
Management Research Group. SMIng represents a superset of the SMIv2
(Structure of Management Information v2) and the SPPI (Structure of Policy
Provisioning Information).  The objective is to replace both the SMIv2 and
the SPPI with a single, merged language for defining information for the
monitoring, configuration, and provisioning of network devices.

The language developed will enable the modeling of network management
information in a manner that provides the benefits of object-oriented
design. To achieve this, the language must allow the design of highly
reusable syntactic/semantic components (templates) that can be reused by
multiple IETF working groups for convenience, consistency, and to maximize
interoperability in device management. A registration mechanism will also be
described for reusable components defined using the language so that their
existence and purpose may be archived.
The language will provide for the definition of a transport-independent
information model so as to allow a variety of implementation-specific
technologies to be derived from a single definition.  To demonstrate this,
the working group will define two technology specific transport mappings:
one for SNMP, and one for COPS.
The language will also provide:
*	syntax optimized for parseability, human readability, &
non-redundancy
*	conventions for representing inheritance and containment of defined
data
*	enhanced attribute-level and association-level constraints
*	a maximal amount of machine-parseable syntax so that programmatic
tools can aid in modeling and implementation
*	a language extension capability

This working group will also define typical usage scenarios for the language
and highlight its features. Finally, it will develop a framework by which
reusable components specified using this language can be registered and made
readily available for continued reuse and improvement.
The working group will not define data models, except as required for
illustrative examples and the refactoring of existing data models.  Specific
data models are to be developed by the subject matter experts using the
SMIng in the appropriate technology specific WGs.