RE: RESOLVED: [NV-L] MIB Loading Error

[James Shanks <jshanks@us.ibm.com>]

Senny,

Let's think for a moment about what
you are asking for.  You are looking for an automated way to fix MIB
syntax which is incorrect?  

 If we knew how to interpret the
broken syntax, then we would not issue an error message and force the user
to deal with it.  We would just load it. The problem with bad or broken
syntax is that it is not always broken in the same way; it's unpredictable.
  And as I said  before, a MIB compiler is just like a C/C++
compiler.  When it finds something it cannot make sense of, it flags
the error for the user to fix.  As long as program code, and MIBs,
are written by humans, there will be syntax errors that the compiler cannot
deal with.  At some point even the most sophisticated compiler is
going to give up. And that is why IBM provides this forum and IBM Support
to assist you if you cannot figure out what the correct syntax ought to
be.

And I'm going to disagree that NetView
has any more significant issues with MIB syntax than any other network
management product.  There are literally thousands of vendors with
tens of thousands of published MIBs and NetView's compilers will load the
vast majority of them just fine.  The issues come up with vendors
like netBotz, who for no clear reason at all, put something strange in
one of  their MIBs and then never issue a corrected version.  Issuing
new versions to correct errors is something lots of vendors do, as you
can see in the comments and MODULE IDENTITY clauses of other MIBs.  So
IMHO, the real question should be directed at vendors who publish weird
stuff.  Perhaps you should open a problem to netBotz support and ask
them why their MIB syntax is so odd.  They only do it in two places
in that MIB, so why did they do it at all?


James Shanks
Level 3 Support  for Tivoli NetView for UNIX and Windows
Network Availability Management
Network Management - Development
Tivoli Software, IBM Corp
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