Subject: Proposed IETF Working Group: sming

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Oct 2000 09:16:23 -0400

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)
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 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.