Subject: [Agentx] Questions on requirements

From: Magnus Fromreide <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 08:48:15 +0200

In 7.2.3 it is stated that a conforming subagent MUST support -Get,
-GetNext and -GetBulk.

In 7.2.4 it is stated that a conforming subagent MUST support -TestSet,
-CommitSet, -UndoSet and -CleanupSet.

I think thoose requirements are excessive.

Consider a subagent that only implements read-only variables.
In that case there should be no need to implement neither of -CommitSet,
nor -UndoSet since the -TestSet response will make sure that there will
be no -CommitSet and thus no -UndoSet for the transaction.

Consider a subagent that implements no variables.
In that case there should be no need for neither of -Get, -GetNext,
-GetBulk, -TestSet, -CommitSet, -UndoSet nor -CleanupSet since the
absence of any -RegisterPDUs should make certain that no requests for
variables are sent to the subagent.

/MF

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From: "Randy Presuhn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 11:13:23 -0700

Hi -

> From: "Magnus Fromreide" <[email-masked]>
> To: <[email-masked]>
> Sent: Sunday, October 14, 2007 11:48 PM
> Subject: [Agentx] Questions on requirements
>
...

I disagree with this reasoning both theoretical and practical grounds.
A robust implementation of any protocol cannot assume that its
communication partners will be well-behaved.  On the practical side,
as an implementor, it is *much* simpler to *not* have differing
conformance requirements.  It's much simpler to do the Agentx protocol
once, for all configurations, rather than hacking out multiple
implementations to fit various subsets.

Randy