From: stephe@usenix.org (Stephen R. Walli)
Newsgroups: comp.std.unix
Subject: Standards Update, POSIX.7b: Software Administration
Date: 29 Dec 1992 14:26:04 -0800
Organization: USENIX Standards Watchdog Committee
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Submitted-by: stephe@usenix.org (Stephen R. Walli)

Esti Koen <emk@cray.com> reports on the October 19-23, 1992 meeting in
Utrecht, NL:

I attended the POSIX.7b meeting in Utrecht, never having been
previously exposed to POSIX.  Lacking the historical perspective, it
was difficult for me to identify when the discussion was a
clarification of an already agreed upon point verses a major shift in
emphasis or direction.  If this report seems somewhat lacking in
detail or introductory, it reflects my own level of involvement to
date.

For the purpose of this report, I assume readers are mainly interested
in broad decisions concerning the content of the standard or a shift
in direction and expected balloting dates.

Early attempts to standardize the nonexistant ``common practice'' of
software administration seemed doomed to failure. (I don't envy those
early pioneers.) POSIX.7 finally adopted the network view of a managed
system.  Forging ahead in areas where they feel they can make
consensus based progress, POSIX.7 is now split into two documents
called POSIX.7a (print queue administration) and POSIX.7b (software
administration).

Recognizing the need for information describing existing practice in
the area of network wide system management, the Open Software
Foundation (OSF) solicited technologies from industry that could be
integrated to simplify system management in heterogeneous computing
environments.  In October, 1991, OSF announced that they had chosen
Hewlett Packard's Software Distribution Utilities to provide the basis
for the OSF Distributed Management Environment (DME).  The current
draft of POSIX.7b is a roughly one year old descendant of the External
Specification that describes the HP Software Distribution Utilities.

The original HP implementation suggested an object orientation but it
was not developed using a rigorous object oriented specification
language.  In one year of POSIX meetings the group has made
significant progress in further defining the attributes of the managed
objects, but the specification is still incomplete and at times
ambiguous.  There is much discussion concerning object behavior.

Open issues include the question of allowing multiple Management
Information Bases (MIB), and which attributes of a software object can
be used, and how they are used as a selection mechanism.

Although invention by a standards committee is not advisable, it seems
unavoidable when the base design is incomplete for the purposes of the
standard.

Several decisions regarding general content were finalized.  There
will be no API included in the standard.  An informative annex which
provides information on how one implementation communicates between
the manager, source and target roles will be included.  A rationale
section which informs the reader as to the intent and history of the
standard will also be included.

The serial media format was previously specified as tar, but will now
be specified as being readable and writable by pax (POSIX.2-1992).
Locking mechanisms are considered to be an implementation detail and
outside the scope of the standard.  A command line option will be
provided to permit interaction sufficient to handle multi-volume media.

The group discussed rewriting part of the document using the ISO
Guidelines for the Definition of Managed Objects (GDMO).  The process
of rewriting using GDMO would have the beneficial side effect of
highlighting inconsistencies, omissions, and redundancies.  In fact,
it was advised that the draft would not be adopted by ISO unless GDMO
was used.

The active participants did not embrace the idea whole heartedly
because a drastic structure change could further delay the balloting
schedule.  Mock ballot is planned to occur after the January meeting.
Budget constraints may impose a time limit on the standards activity,
and active participants fear having the POSIX.7b standards activity
permanently interrupted before going to ballot.  Refinement of the
existing object definitions and behaviors continues at a fast pace.

Volume-Number: Volume 30, Number 12