2.3 Result of the algorithmic Transformation: A first Object Model

The JIDM algorithm described in the previous section serves as a basis for obtaining the first version of our object model for Unix workstations. However, two remarks must be made:

1.

The JIDM algorithm has been developed for implementing management gateways. This implies that a gateway needs to store any information related to SNMP variables (table indices, object identifiers etc.) in object attributes. While this is certainly necessary for management gateways, such an approach is not needed for the redesign of our agent.

2.

The target language of the JIDM algorithm is, as already mentioned in section 2.2, OMG IDL. It is absolutely crucial for the further design of the management agent to transform the MIB into a notation which permits further refinements with commercially available CASE-tools. The tool we deployed (described in section 3.1) is based on the Object Modeling Technique (OMT) [11] but is also able to take IDL files as input. Consequently, the transformation of IDL into OMT was handled by the CASE-tool. Figure 3 depicts a detail of the first version of the obtained object model.