Network Working Group J. Schoenwaelder Internet-Draft F. Strauss Expires: December 20, 2000 TU Braunschweig June 21, 2000 Using XML to Exchange SMI Definitions draft-irtf-nmrg-smi-xml-00.txt Status of this Memo This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." To view the entire list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories, see http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/ietf/iid-abstracts.txt This Internet-Draft will expire on December 20, 2000. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000). All Rights Reserved. Abstract This memo describes how the Extensible Markup Language (XML) can be used to exchange SMIv1, SMIv2 and SMIng definitions between XML enabled applications. Schoenwaelder & Strauss Expires December 20, 2000 [Page 1] Internet-Draft XML SMI Exchange Format June 2000 Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2. SMI XML DTD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3. Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 4. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Full Copyright Statement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Schoenwaelder & Strauss Expires December 20, 2000 [Page 2] Internet-Draft XML SMI Exchange Format June 2000 1. Introduction This memo describes how the Extensible Markup Language (XML) [1] can be used to exchange SMIv1 [2][3][4], SMIv2 [5][6][7] and SMIng [8] definitions between XML enabled applications. The acronym SMI is used throughout this document as a version neutral name for SMIv1, SMIv2 or SMIng. The Document Type Definition (DTD) defined in this memo allows applications with embedded generic XML parsers to read (or edit) the original SMI definitions. The XML DTD is optimized for this purpose. Terseness of the XML output was of minimal importance since humans are expected to read the originial SMI definitions. In fact, the XML format of an SMI module is significantly longer compared to the original SMI definition. This is inline with the design goals for XML, which favours computer readability over terseness. There are several scenarios where an XML representation of SMI definitions is useful: o The XML format may be used as an intermediate format between a validating SMI compiler/parser and post processing tools such as code or schema generators. (The undocumented mosy format has been used in the past for this purpose. The mosy format does not preserve all information present in a SMI module and is therefore problematic.) o The XML format can be used with XSLT post processors to generate documentation in various formats. o The XML format makes it possible to access SMI definition from a variety of programming languages. XML parsers are available in Java, C, C++, Tcl, Perl, Python, and GNU Emacs Lisp in both commercial and open source forms. o There are generic tools for maintaining large sets of XML definitions. This includes tools to search for definitions with a specific property. Such generic XML tools can be very useful in organizations that are required to maintain large amounts of SMI definitions. Schoenwaelder & Strauss Expires December 20, 2000 [Page 3] Internet-Draft XML SMI Exchange Format June 2000 2. SMI XML DTD Schoenwaelder & Strauss Expires December 20, 2000 [Page 4] Internet-Draft XML SMI Exchange Format June 2000 Schoenwaelder & Strauss Expires December 20, 2000 [Page 5] Internet-Draft XML SMI Exchange Format June 2000 3. Examples 4. Acknowledgments This document is the result of discussions within the Network Management Research Group (NMRG) of the Internet Research Task Force[9] (IRTF). Special thanks to Bert Helthuis, Atin Banerjee and Debnarayan Kar for providing useful feedback and access to their private SMI XML DTDs. A prototype implementation of an SMIv1/SMIv2/SMIng converter to XML is freely available as part of the libsmi[10] SMI parser library distribution. Schoenwaelder & Strauss Expires December 20, 2000 [Page 9] Internet-Draft XML SMI Exchange Format June 2000 References [1] World Wide Web Consortium, "Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0", W3C REC-xml-19980210, February 1998. [2] Rose, M. and K. McCloghrie, "Structure and Identification of Management Information for TCP/IP-based Internets", STD 16, RFC 1155, May 1990. [3] Rose, M. and K. McCloghrie, "Concise MIB Definitions", STD 16, RFC 1212, March 1991. [4] Rose, M., "A Convention for Defining Traps for use with the SNMP", RFC 1215, March 1991. [5] McCloghrie, K., Perkins, D., Schoenwaelder, J., Case, J., Rose, M. and S. Waldbusser, "Structure of Management Information Version 2 (SMIv2)", STD 58, RFC 2578, April 1999. [6] McCloghrie, K., Perkins, D., Schoenwaelder, J., Case, J., Rose, M. and S. Waldbusser, "Textual Conventions for SMIv2", STD 58, RFC 2579, April 1999. [7] McCloghrie, K., Perkins, D., Schoenwaelder, J., Case, J., Rose, M. and S. Waldbusser, "Conformance Statements for SMIv2", STD 58, RFC 2580, April 1999. [8] Strauss, F., "SMIng - A new Structure of Management Information", Internet Draft draft-irtf-nmrg-sming-02.txt, February 2000. [9] http://www.irtf.org/ [10] http://www.ibr.cs.tu-bs.de/projects/libsmi/ Authors' Addresses Juergen Schoenwaelder TU Braunschweig Bueltenweg 74/75 38106 Braunschweig Germany Phone: +49 531 391-3289 EMail: schoenw@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de Schoenwaelder & Strauss Expires December 20, 2000 [Page 10] Internet-Draft XML SMI Exchange Format June 2000 Frank Strauss TU Braunschweig Bueltenweg 74/75 38106 Braunschweig Germany Phone: +49 531 391-3266 EMail: strauss@ibr.cs.tu-bs.de Schoenwaelder & Strauss Expires December 20, 2000 [Page 11] Internet-Draft XML SMI Exchange Format June 2000 Full Copyright Statement Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000). All Rights Reserved. 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