San Francisco - As details about Apple's Open Collaboration Environment emerge, users are getting a picture of a radically new way to work with Macintoshes.
OCE, which sources said is now expected in October, will add a suite of messaging and directory services to the Mac operating system (see MacWEEK, Jan. 20). It will provide a familiar, Finder-based interface for network-communications operations that now require specialized procedures and front ends. And it will make it easy for developers to add collaborative capabilities to virtually any application.
Much of OCE will be invisible to users, but they will see its effect on the Finder immediately after installation. Two new volumes, depicted by World and Mailbox icons in current prototypes, will appear on the desktop.
>It's a small world.
The World volume brings all users, workgroups, devices and services on a network into a single window on the desktop. Each will be represented by an icon in the window.
Users will be able to send documents to co-workers simply by dragging file icons to the World window and dropping them into icons representing other users and groups. OCE will then add the recipient's address to the file and send it across the network.
Users also will be able to browse database and information services on the network, even those that require a gateway, through the World volume. By adding filters defined by the user or developed by third parties, a user could collect all the new entries on a remote volume first thing each morning. The resulting files then would appear in the Mail volume window.
>Mail and more.
On its surface, the Mail volume will provide a view of all incoming messages and documents. Beyond that, it will allow standard applications, including word processors, spreadsheets and personal information managers, to act as a messaging front end, according to sources. To send a letter via OCE, for instance, users will need only to create the document in an OCE-compatible program, add an address and drag the file's icon to the Mailbox window.
"Applications will be able to trigger mail events based on almost any event," a developer said. "For example, when you type a predefined string into a document, such as someone's name, the application will generate a copy, send it to the person whose name you typed and then update that copy each time you save."
>Data wrappers.
The OCE Directory Manager will work in the background to sort and filter information based upon a variety of fields attached to each file on networked volumes. In addition to the file name, users will be able to append keywords, events and customized fields to a file. This is accomplished through data wrappers, a layer of information about a file "wrapped" around its contents.
Developers are expected to offer a variety of custom data-wrapper capabilities. Wrappers could be used to create hot links between specific applications and to instruct the recipient program on how to handle the message data.
For example, a data wrapper sent by a scheduling application could tell a mail front end to send a reminder to each person attending a meeting.
>Business cards.
Trading address information will be as easy as exchanging cards during a meeting.
When address information is dragged from the World volume, it will reportedly become a file represented by a Business Card icon. The file can be transferred electronically or on disk to other users, who then can drop it into their World volume. As long as the second Macintosh has a network connection to the volume named on the card, mail can be sent to that address simply by dropping a message on the icon.
>Live free or retail.
Apple officials are reportedly debating how OCE will be packaged. Developers said a server version that runs on top of AppleShare 3.0 and delivers fast performance will definitely be sold as a retail package.
The slower, peer-to-peer OCE package, however, may not be bundled with system software. Instead, Apple may sell the software, which one developer called a "collaborative Personal AppleShare," as a retail package or allow developers to bundle it with OCE applications.
Potential OCE developers are reportedly urging Apple to bundle the product to ensure a market for their applications. "Developers need Apple to ship the peer-to-peer OCE with System 7 or, at least, let us bundle it," said a developer. "It will be useless to write OCE applications if everyone doesn't have it."
(MacWEEK News, February 10, 1992, page 1) (c) Copyright 1992 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
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VIM more vigorous than OMI
By Mitch Ratcliffe
Redwood City, Calif. - Forget what they said about the Open Messaging Interface just five months ago. Apple, Lotus Development Corp. and Novell Inc. said here last week that they plan to develop a new programming interface for messaging- and mail-enabled applications that will supersede OMI.
The three companies, joined by Borland International Inc., said they will serve as trustees and developers of the new standard, an application programming interface (API) called the Vendor-Independent Messaging (VIM) interface. Developers writing to VIM will be able to plug any E-mail or collaborative application front end into cross-platform networks without having to allow for format translations.
In September, Apple and IBM Corp. endorsed the OMI API, which was to be written by Lotus. But OMI, originally due in December, has not shipped.
VIM, however, will offer capabilities superior to those of the stillborn Lotus standard, according to Gursharan Sidhu, Apple's technical director, who chaired the VIM group. Apple said VIM is an integral part of its Open Collaboration Environment (OCE), which will add workgroup capabilities to System 7.
Sidhu and executives from the VIM companies said details on how the specification has been improved will not be made public until it ships to developers in March.
The major improvement seems to be increased support. Novell gave OMI a lukewarm welcome in September, saying it would support that interface only if users demanded it. Last week, the company said it will build the VIM interface into future versions of its NetWare Message Handling Service (MHS). MHS is a foundation for cross-platform E-mail and groupware applications.
"Novell's endorsement points to additional pressure on Microsoft's MAPI [Messaging API]," said Connall Ryan, president of Cambridge, Mass.-based ON Technology Inc. He said Novell's VIM endorsement carries a lot of weight in the developer community.
Beyond Inc., the Cambridge, Mass., E-mail developer, last week announced it will support VIM, although it had been hesitant about OMI. The company said it will continue to write mail systems tailored to native mail engines, such as Novell's MHS, Banyan Systems Inc.'s VINES mail and Apple's OCE.
Borland's endorsement may increase VIM's impact on Microsoft Corp.'s MAPI. A Windows company with less-than-energetic Mac ambitions, Borland competes with Microsoft on several fronts.
"There is a lot going for VIM with Borland's technology-oriented reputation and Lotus' cc:Mail, with more than 1.5 million installed users," said Michael Heylin, senior associate with Creative Strategies Research International, a Santa Clara, Calif., market research company.
But ON Technology's Ryan also said his company is not among the converted because VIM adds an additional layer of code to workgroup computing. "In order to have a finely tuned [collaborative application], there must be a hot link between the client and the server. We're not convinced yet [the VIM] will be that hot a link."
Sidhu described himself as glue holding the group together. One source close to the negotiations said it was surprising to see the Borland and Lotus representatives sitting at the same table.
"I don't think Borland and Lotus have talked face to face about this yet," the executive said. "Apple and Novell have been the peacemakers in this group."
But of such uneasy collaborations are market advantages born, said analyst Michael Heylin.
"Borland and Lotus compete less with one another than they do with Microsoft," he said. "I'm convinced they got together quickly, before Microsoft pushed MAPI."
(MacWEEK News, February 10, 1992, page 1) (c) Copyright 1992 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
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NetWare SQL 3.0 will answer Macs when DAL calls
By Mitch Ratcliffe
Boston - A fusillade of initiatives launched by Novell Inc. around this week's NetWorld 92 could have the net effect of bringing the Macintosh closer to the corporate database mainstream.
The company will announce here this week that NetWare SQL 3.0, the next version of its data-access software for NetWare servers, will support Apple's Database Access Language (DAL). The result will be that Mac users running any DAL-compliant application will have immediate access to data stored in hundreds of programs that support NetWare SQL.
The Novell software, due next month, will work with off-the-shelf applications such as Microsoft Excel or Lotus 1-2-3; custom applications created with HyperCard or ACIUS Inc.'s 4th Dimension; and Mac query tools such as Andyne Computing Inc.'s GQL, Brio Technology Inc.'s DataPrism and Fairfield Software Inc.'s ClearAccess.
NetWare SQL, a NetWare loadable module (NLM), will layer Apple's DAL Server software over a NetWare 3.11 server running on an Intel 80386- or 80486-based computer. Mac users must be running Version 3.01 of Novell's NetWare for the Mac client software, plus Apple's DAL client system extension.
The new NLM will translate queries from DAL, Apple's SQL-based data-manipulation language, into a format understood by applications built on Btrieve, Novell's record manager. Btrieve has become an industry standard, with support from a long list of major business accounting, project-management and sales-management systems.
"Until now we have not been able to find a useful, convenient cross-platform database," said Mike Winn, senior analyst in the Applications Development Group of Atlanta-based Georgia Power Co. Winn, beta tester for NetWare SQL 3.0, said that after overcoming some initial problems with writing to the NetWare server from DAL applications, he is impressed with the product.
"The first betas were quite slow, but it is much faster now," Winn said. "Now I'm starting to get a warm feeling about [NetWare SQL]. It looks real promising for us."
Georgia Power had considered Oracle as its cross-platform database, but decided against it, he said, because "we're a token-ring shop and we couldn't use Oracle on token ring without adding special drivers on all our Macs."
His employer, according to Winn, faces a problem many companies do: Information workers use IBM PCs or compatibles, while executives tend to favor the Mac. Making an executive information system work in the mixed environment was very difficult because the only thing the two platforms had in common was NetWare.
Pricing for NetWare SQL 3.0 will range from $795 for five users to $10,995 for a 200-user version.
A runtime version of the NetWare 3.11 network operating system will be bundled with versions of the SQL NLM for 20 or more users, allowing network managers to create a dedicated database server on a NetWare network.
Separately, Novell last week announced an upgrade that adds support for SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) to NetWare for Macintosh 3.0, plus an initiative to rally the industry around a new network-management standard.
Novell Inc.'s Development Products Division is at 5918 W. Courtyard Drive, Austin, Texas 78730. Phone (512) 346-8380; fax (512) 345-7478.
(MacWEEK News, February 10, 1992, page 1) (c) Copyright 1992 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
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New architecture to simplify printing for users, developers
By Neil McManus and Carolyn Said
Cupertino, Calif. - A new print architecture from Apple should simplify life for users when they print and for developers when they write drivers, sources said.
Apple is expected to release an alpha version of the new architecture, first described in 1989, to developers at its Worldwide Developers Conference in May. The architecture, which will come in the form of an extension to System 7, probably won't reach users until early next year, sources said. Apple had no comment
"It sounds great - at least on paper," said Craig Cline, associate editor of the Seybold Reports in Malibu, Calif. "The functions [the new architecture provides] should make the Mac more useful and more flexible."
For users, the architecture will simplify some aspects of printing as well as add some features.
Users will be able to print by simply dragging document files to printer icons on the desktop. "Windows 3.1 will have that capability, so the Mac should as well," Cline said. NeXT Computer Inc.'s machines also use this method, and an unreleased utility shown at last year's MacHack conference can add the same functionality to the Mac.
Users will be able to select printers through a dialog box in the print process, although the Chooser will likely remain in some form.
An improved spooler will work over networks, so users can spool files to a central print server.
Users will be able to print different-size pages from within a single document and will be able to set discrete page sizes, such as 2 inches by 2 inches, from the print dialog box. For example, a user could print a letter and its envelope from a single Microsoft Word document.
Applications must be rewritten to take advantage of the new features, although older applications will still be able to print.
For developers, the new print architecture's most significant feature is that it will provide standardized toolbox calls for features such as text rotation and gray-scale patterns. This means applications will print in a predictable manner, making it easier for printer manufacturers to develop Mac drivers.
"A Macintosh printer driver now takes about two to three man-years to write from scratch," said Steven Gully, product marketing manager at GDT Softworks Inc. in Burnaby, British Columbia. "If Apple comes out with a new print architecture, that development time could be cut down to two or three months."
Apple's printer product line leaves several gaping holes for other vendors to fill, such as color printers, large-format printers, wide-carriage impact printers and battery-powered portable printers, Gully said.
However, a more open Mac printer market will not necessarily mean users will have open minds about purchasing devices from other vendors.
"Apple controls about 80 percent of the Mac printer market. Mac people are very comfortable buying Apple printers," said Marc Boer, an analyst at BIS Strategic Decisions, a market research company in Norwell, Mass. "If you're used to getting your food at a certain table, it will take a lot of convincing to pull you away from that table."
(MacWEEK News, February 10, 1992, page 1) (c) Copyright 1992 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
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Faster drivers slow in coming
By Neil McManus
Mountain View, Calif. - Users will have to wait until late summer for the next-generation LaserWriter driver, which offers PostScript Level 2 support and a speed increase of up to tenfold.
Adobe Systems Inc. and Apple, co-developers of the driver, originally promised to release it this spring (see MacWEEK, Oct. 8, 1991). However, the development team is taking additional time to test the driver for compatibility with Mac applications, according to Eric Rogge, product marketing manager of PostScript drivers.
"A lot of people are looking at their watches saying, 'Is it ready yet? Is it ready yet?,' " Rogge added. "We just tell them we're working as fast as we can."
Without the new driver, users of PostScript Level 2 printers have no immediate way to take advantage of such key Level 2 features as improved memory management and device-independent color. "PostScript Level 2 is really just a marketing gimmick without the new driver," said Marc Boer, an analyst at BIS Strategic Decisions, a market-research firm in Norwell, Mass.
The biggest benefit of the new drivers will be speed, with performance increases of up to 10 times on complex documents.
"People will not believe the difference in speed," said Chris Richter, marketing manager at Dataproducts Corp. in Woodland Hills, Calif. "We've run tests on our LZR 960, and print jobs that used to take five minutes take less than a minute with the [comparable] Level 2 Windows driver.
"We would love to show our Mac customers the advantages of Level 2 right now, but we can't until we get the driver," Richter added. "In a lot of ways customers don't know what they're missing."
PostScript Level 1 printers also will gain in speed from the new driver because the Mac's Print Manager is being retooled to generate PostScript code faster, said Michael Hopwood, product manager for Apple's Imaging Product Group.
PostScript Level 2 printers will see additional benefits with new drivers, especially when Mac applications are written to take advantage of Level 2 features. According to Rogge, the driver will support Apple's RGB (red, green, blue) color calibration extensions, due this year (see MacWEEK, Oct. 8, 1991). This will pave the way for color-management systems offering true device-independent color.
Other Level 2 features include caching of forms for multiple copies and composite fonts, which will make larger character sets possible.
Adobe is also working to add support for non-AppleTalk serial printers in the new driver, Rogge said. The driver will directly support Adobe's upcoming Carousel electronic document-interchange technology, he added. Users will be able to print files to Carousel format, as they now can print to PostScript.
Vendors now offering PostScript Level 2 printers for the Mac include Apple, Tektronix Inc., Dataproducts Corp., Texas Instruments Inc. and NEC Corp. Other manufacturers, such as Hewlett-Packard Co., are expected to join this group shortly.
(MacWEEK News, February 10, 1992, page 1) (c) Copyright 1992 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
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Mac the Knife: The software side of Apple
Now if Santa and his helpers waited until after Thanksgiving to get going on the gift season, there wouldn't be a gift season, which might explain what happened last December to many a retailer. The same thing holds true for Apple: If the engineers weren't hard at work now there would be no new products for the future.
Fortunately, Apple engineers are working, ensuring that the pipeline will always be filled with new and wondrous products. When that consumer Classic bundle hits the store shelves later this year, you can expect that it will include a new version of System 6. While not exactly System 7 Lite, it will sport a number of Finder features that closely mimic what System 7 users are used to. Features designed primarily for the modern Mac office, such as Personal AppleShare, publish and subscribe and the like, will not make the cut.
The mere mention of operating systems makes some of Apple's third-party developers nervous, especially when they peer into the future and realize that by next year Apple will be pushing five operating systems: System 7, A/UX-PowerOpen, Newton, Taligent and a top-secret fifth and mobile operating system. The developers fear that this number of operating systems just might diffuse the evangelical message somewhat.
>Raw Taligent.
The Knife anticipates an imminent announcement from Apple and IBM concerning Taligent. Joseph Guglielmi, IBM's top OS/2 marketing wizard, has been tapped to head up the company. Additional personnel announcements and the location of the company office should follow.
At Kaleida, however, things are beginning to get mired in a web of innuendo. On the one hand, the prospective head of the company, Robert Carberry, currently an assistant general manager at IBM, is occupying himself with devising compensation plans for potential employees. On the other hand, IBM is rumored to be having some second thoughts about KaleidaScript (formerly MediaScript) once it realized that the multimedia control language will be running on the Mac for a couple of years before it's available for IBM platforms. Strategic alliance and joint ventures or not, there are some skeptics at IBM who see little reason to give a competitor this kind of head start.
>Consider the source.
Few would doubt that Apple would like to introduce a 33-MHz Quadra in April, or even better, in March contemporaneously with the '030-based Mac LC II. But alas, such an introduction is not to be. A souped-up Quadra is still on schedule for this summer, probably in August. The cause for this timing is not all that mysterious either. Motorola simply can't guarantee Apple that it would be able to deliver the 33-MHz chip in sufficient quantity until the summer time frame.
>RISC gauntlet.
There's little chance of fishing in the murky waters of future Apple products, both hardware and software, without snagging a RISC Mac item. While some would have you believe that the RISC Mac is imminent, at Apple they'll tell you a different story (once you get 'em loosened up, of course). Apple management has decided that January 20, 1994, the 10-year anniversary of the Mac's introduction, would be a simply peachy date, and they're probably right. The only problem is that the engineers who have to do the work are a great deal less optimistic. For one thing, the actual version of the chip to be used won't even be available until late this year.
Then some will say that it takes more than software engineering to get a product out the door. It takes some good management skills together with a stable corporate environment. This week's textbook example of how wrong things can go is the Claris MacWrite Pro project. Some rather important members of the beleaguered development team have left recently, prompting some observers to speculate that at this rate the Claris word processor will eventually be the only word processor available for the Mac that still isn't System 7-savvy. There's been a high-level loss to the HyperCard team as well.
Whether you are in the 40th year of your reign as the Queen or you're just visiting Guantanamo before being forcibly returned to Haiti, only the tipsters get the MacWEEK mugs. Find the Knife at (415) 243-3500, fax (415) 243-3650, MCI (MactheKnife), AppleLink (MacWEEK) and CompuServe/ZiffNet/Zmac.
(MacWEEK, Mac the Knife, February 10, 1992, page 106) (c) Copyright 1992 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
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Voila to put Pathworks magic in Mac
By Mitch Ratcliffe
San Francisco - Macs have tapped into Digital Equipment Corp.'s VAX computers through the Apple/DEC-developed Pathworks network software since 1989, but until now they have been unable to manage Pathworks installations.
Path Manager 1.0, available now from Voila! Software, is the first package that lets Mac clients manage servers and print queues on a Pathworks network. It provides a graphical front end to the Pathworks 1.0 or 1.1 environments, with extensive balloon help explanations of cryptic VAX privileges. Pricing for the Path Manager Mac application and a VAX responder application begins at $995 for MicroVAX 2000 or 3100 servers.
To run Path Manager, users will need to have the $495 Pathworks for Macintosh client software installed and have either LocalTalk or Ethernet connectivity to a VAX running the Pathworks server. The Macintosh Communications Toolbox and DECnet connection or AppleTalk-to-DECnet gateway tools must be installed on the Mac.
Path Manager provides the ability to manage multiple VAX servers simultaneously. A Voila! responder must be installed on each VAX. It works with a component in Pathworks, the Remote Management Interface, to provide full access to VAX management commands on the client Macintosh. Users can create new file servers, print servers or server volumes by selecting the location on a VAX where they wish to install it. Path Manager then presents a dialog box in which the user can select from the appropriate preferences and privileges for each type of server. Users also can see detailed descriptions of each VAX privilege when using balloon help.
"Path Manager gave us the ability to see what we're doing on the VAX rather than having to imagine what we're doing through the command line," said beta-tester Scott Joy, project manager for information services research and development at Liberty Mutual Insurance Co. of Portsmouth, N.H. "There are privileges that our VAX administrators didn't understand before," Joy said.
Users are represented by icons that appear with a police officer's cap when they have been given system administrator's privileges. Similarly, volumes appear with a lock icon when users have read-only access. "Now we can check privileges at a glance," Joy said.
Pathworks' print queues can be controlled by Path Manager users, who can view, cancel and redirect between print queues jobs sent to Apple LaserWriters and DEC PostScript printers.
Path Manager is available for VAX 3300-3900, 11/570 and 11/780 servers at $1,450. VAX 6000, 8000 and 9000 servers require a $1,950 license.
Voila Software is at 1166 Pine St., Suite 5, San Francisco, Calif. 94109. Phone (415) 776-1068; fax (415) 776-9792.
(MacWEEK Gateways, February 10, 1992, page 18) (c) Copyright 1992 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
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Novell supports AppleTalk SNMP in NetWare
By Mitch Ratcliffe
Provo, Utah - Novell Inc. last week introduced an upgrade to NetWare for the Macintosh 3.0 that adds SNMP support for information about AppleTalk devices.
Available now, a $2,995 200-user version of the program's NetWare loaded module (NLM) for the Mac will ship with the ability to return SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) responses for the AppleTalk MIB (Management Information Base) I to a network-management application. The Mac NLM runs on a NetWare server and implements the AFP (AppleTalk Filing Protocol), which allows Macs to access files stored there.
Previously, NetWare's SNMP capabilities did not directly support the AppleTalk MIB. Users could, however, collect Mac SNMP data to a NetWare-based management application by using the FastPath 4 and FastPath 5 routers from Shiva Corp. of Cambridge, Mass., which have the ability to translate AppleTalk SNMP data into the TCP/IP packet format for transmission to a NetWare server.
Novell said it is working with several developers to create Mac-based applications for managing NetWare networks.
The company this week also announced a broad coalition of companies that will develop a common DOS-based management standard to be called the NetWare Management System. Under the new standard SNMP information will be used to inventory, map and troubleshoot heterogeneous networks.
Some Mac-based packet analyzer applications, such as the $595 NetMinder 2.0 from Neon Software Inc. of Lafayette, Calif., can capture and decode SNMP packets on mixed NetWare and AppleTalk networks. But NetMinder does not provide management capabilities, only the ability to troubleshoot by examining the packet contents.
In March, Novell will distribute a free copy of the AppleTalk protocol stack with SNMP support to current owners of NetWare for the Macintosh. The company said support for AppleTalk MIB II will be added when that specification is finalized.
Novell Inc. is at 122 East 1700 South, Provo, Utah 84606. Phone (801) 429-7000.
(MacWEEK Gateways, February 10, 1992, page 18) (c) Copyright 1992 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
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Taking a good look at SNMP
By John Dallatore
Now that Apple is committed to SNMP on AppleTalk, and compliant products are starting to ship, it's time to examine the details of this emerging standard.
Even if your interest in networks is limited strictly to AppleTalk, you've almost certainly read about SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol). But like many Mac managers, you may not have paid much attention because you don't want to add TCP/IP to your network just to manage your AppleTalk routers. While it is true that most current SNMP implementations presume a TCP/IP network, SNMP is designed to operate independently of any network protocol.
The transport protocol that moves messages between a network-management station and the managed entity (a network node to most of us) is IP. It serves the same purpose as the Datagram Delivery Protocol in AppleTalk, so AppleTalk is capable of carrying SNMP information. A proposed specification for this purpose was written by Greg Minshall of Novell Inc. and Mike Ritter of Apple. (The descriptive document "SNMP Over AppleTalk v2.2," can be found in the developers bulletin board on AppleLink.)
Network managers should expect to see AppleTalk-based SNMP products soon, now that developers have a proposed standard to follow. So what can an AppleTalk network manager actually manage using SNMP?
>The role of SNMP.
SNMP relies on a simple scheme, in which software running on a network-management station performs Get and Set commands to monitor and control information in a networkwide MIB (Management Information Base). The MIB defines the structure of the information available about devices throughout the network.
The MIB describes a sort of distributed database, but there is no database in the conventional sense. Information that appears within the MIB is actually stored on the relevant node. In effect, Set and Get commands act like reads and writes to an object-oriented database.
A device that supports SNMP stores MIB data elements called objects. Management stations read these objects from various network nodes to collect performance or status information. Some MIB objects are writeable, and by changing these a management station can affect the operation of a remote device.
Get operations on MIB objects pose no serious risk to network stability, so every vendor supports them.
But SNMP has only a primitive and easily subverted authentication mechanism, so most vendors wisely have delayed or limited support for Set commands. As a result, SNMP in the real world provides a way to monitor devices but not control them. Even when SNMP is available, most routers still can be configured only by the vendors' own management utilities.
>The structure of SNMP.
The AppleTalk-IP working group of the Internet Engineering Task Force in July 1991 published RFC 1243, which describes the proposed MIB for AppleTalk networks. RFC 1243 is expected to become an Internet Advisory Board Official Protocol Standard. The AppleTalk MIB defines groups of management information objects (mostly counters and data tables) for the AppleTalk network protocols. Although intended primarily for the Internet community, RFC 1243 has been implemented already by several AppleTalk router vendors and certainly will be the basis for future AppleTalk and SNMP products.
If a device includes support for a particular protocol group defined in the AppleTalk MIB, it must implement every object in the group. A synopsis of the objects in each AppleTalk MIB group follows.
Counters constitute a large portion of the AppleTalk MIB. For every port and most protocols, if something can be counted, it probably is; tables of information maintained within a node constitute most of the rest.
>LocalTalk Link Access Protocol.
This group contains counters for the low-level interface to a LocalTalk network, including every kind of good and bad packet detected on each LocalTalk port in the device being monitored. Similar objects are defined elsewhere in the MIB for other physical interfaces (Ethernet, token ring, etc.), but because LocalTalk is a physical-layer implementation unique to AppleTalk networks, the MIB objects to monitor it are defined here.
>AppleTalk Address Resolution Protocol.
This group provides access to a node's AARP table, which is used to map AppleTalk addresses to physical addresses for AppleTalk networks other than LocalTalk.
>ATPort.
This group defines a table that contains configuration information for each port on a router. The table includes the network number (or range of numbers), zone lists, default zone, network address and status (operational, unconfigured, off or invalid) for each port. Whether a port used an explicit, garnered or guessed configuration when it started most recently is also available.
>Datagram Delivery Protocol.
This group maintains read-only counters on thehandling of datagrams: the number in, out, forwarded or dropped, and why. (Each possible reason has a counter, of course).
>Routing Table Maintenance Protocol.
This group is designed primarily for monitoring and diagnosing AppleTalk routers, and it allows for some dangerous fiddling. Read-write access is permitted for each entry in the routing table, so someone at an SNMP management station can change the routing information in a running router. While this prospect will raise hairs on the necks of many managers, it might allow them to perform some currently impossible tasks, such as adding a new zone or changing a network range on a running network without having to reboot every router on their networks.
>Kinetics Internet Protocol.
This group provides configuration, status and routing information in a tunneling router using KIP. Information stored here includes hop count, KIP broadcast address, AppleTalk network information for each routing entry, and whether the data is shared with other routers or kept private.
>Zone Information Protocol.
This group provides access to a node's ZIP Table, which includes the numbers and names for each network known to the node being monitored. This information could be useful in diagnosing ZoneList problems. Individual ZIP Table entries can be changed from valid to invalid, forcing the node to deactivate the bad entry.
>Future groups.
Earlier proposed versions of the AppleTalk MIB included groups for higher-level protocols, such as AppleTalk Transaction Protocol, AppleTalk Session Protocol, Printer Access Protocol and ADSP (AppleTalk Data Stream Protocol), but these were dropped from RFC 1243. Routers and bridges don't care about or track these protocols, but database, file and print servers sometimes do. Without standard groups for these protocols, however, you are not likely to see SNMP management or monitoring of printers or servers, except through private or experimental MIBs created by vendors.
>Traps.
One SNMP facility, called trapping, allows a device to notify a management station whenever a significant event occurs. There are five basic traps that indicate when a network interface or device comes up or shuts down. A mechanism for sending or receiving traps is included in the "SNMP Over AppleTalk v2.2" document.
At first, traps sound like a great feature, but there are many practical problems in implementing them. For a router to notice significant events, it would have to spend valuable CPU time and memory constantly evaluating what it is doing, instead of just moving data as quickly as possible. Few customers, given the choice, are willing to pay more or accept reduced performance for increased self-awareness in a router. Also, there is no guarantee that a trap, if sent, is going to be heard. If the device or the network is having a problem that triggers a trap, it might encounter the same problem getting the trap message delivered.
>Private MIBs.
Third-party vendors are encouraged to define their own extensions to the AppleTalk MIB, so network-management stations can access the special features of their products. Among sellers of popular AppleTalk routers, both Compatible Systems Corp. and Cayman Systems Inc. support the current proposed AppleTalk MIB.
Shiva Corp., Wellfleet Communications Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. have published private or temporary MIBs specific to their products, in some cases because their SNMP support preceded the publication of an AppleTalk MIB. Vendors are likely to deprecate private MIB objects that have matching objects in the standard AppleTalk MIB.
If you want to examine the details, a vendor's MIB will reveal the secrets of your favorite router box; just ask for the vendor's Open Systems Interconnection Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1) MIB definition.
(MacWEEK Gateways Extra, February 10, 1992, page 22) (c) Copyright 1992 Coastal Associates, L.P. All rights reserved. This material may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
