Subject: Re: JMP> Why have a Job State Table ? [ISSUE: 'printing' state value: impressionsRequested vs. impressionsCompletedCurrentCopy]

From: Tom Hastings <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 17:16:16 PDT

At 11:46 05/07/97 PDT, JK Martin wrote:
>Harry,
>
>As you know all too well, I'm in general agreement with the overall
>nature of your message.

snip...

>> D    jobCopiesCompleted 49
>> D    impressionsCompletedCurrentCopy 53
>> 
>> The StateValue for printing that I had defined was CurrentCopy. Somehow,
>> it got changed in your MIB to impressionsRequested... which is a STATIC
>> attribute.
>
>This kind of situation happens all too frequently, IMHO.  It has also
>caused significant delay in progressing this effort, while others in
>the group "discover" such changes in the text.  Let us NOT DO THIS anymore.

Harry,

I checked both your slides (jmfoil.ppt) and the great jmpexp.pdf tutorial 
explanation that you did.  The slides says "Total number of impressions"  
and the jmpexp.pdf says "Total Impressions" for the state value for the 
"printing" state.

Where did I mess up in editing "total [number of] impressions" into 
"impressionsRequested" in the MIB spec?   

I thought that "total number" was somewhat ambiguous in that it could mean 
either (1) the STATIC value that is the number to be printed or the current 
number already printed.  But since the Job State table already has the 
jmJobStateImpressionsCompleted object, I thought that the only interpretation
of "total number" must be impressions requested, not impressions completed.
And no where did I see "current copy" in either your foils or jmpexp.pdf.

We certainly can change the state value to impressionsCompletedCurrentCopy
from the STATIC value: impressionsRequested.  Should we?

But that means that the monitoring application can't find out the
number of impression requested without going to the 'dreaded' Attribute
table.  But since impresssionRequested is a STATIC attribute a
MONITORING program only has to go to the Attribute table once to get
the value for the thermometer for a particular job.

I had thought that the reason that you put the STATIC "total impressions"
state value into the Job State table was so that the monitoring program didn't 
have to go the Attribute table at all.

If we change the state value for the 'printing' state from a STATIC
attribute to a dynamic attribute, it seems somewhat strange that the 
state value for the 'processing' state would remain a STATIC value:
octetsRequested.  Since the foils and jmpexp.pdf 
had "total [number of] octets", did you mean "octetsRequested" or 
"octetsCompleted" for the 'processing' state value?  

Thanks,
Tom