Subject: JMP> Instantiation

From: Harry Lewis <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 May 1997 19:28:42 -0400

I would like to clarify something I think we agreed to in San Diego, but I'm
not sure I understand it.

I think we said something like... all mandatory attributes must be
"instantiated" as soon as a job becomes Pending. The idea, here, is that we
can't predict what combinations of attributes an application might stuff
together in a varbind so there must be a valid response to (at least) the
mandatory set.

Meanwhile, we moved the alert code which would have been associated with state
NeedsAttention out of the Job State Table and into the Attribute table... so,
now I want to test the assumption by asking the question:

   Is the deviceAlertCode attribute only valid while the state is
   needsAttention?  Should the agent return unknown(-1) while in other
   states? Or would the row disappear from the Attribute table?

I think the answer is the row must be instantiated and the value -1 be
returned, according to our agreement. This really doesn't seem very
efficient, however, because there will be a deviceAlertCode row for every
job in the Attribute table even though the vast majority of jobs will
never need attention!

Harry Lewis - IBM Printing Systems