references on topic- type-based notification work

[Mark Ellison <ellison@ieee.org>]

Hi,

There is a good article in the March/April 2004 issue of IEEE Software, 
Distributed Programming with Typed Events 
<http://csdl.computer.org/comp/mags/so/2004/02/s2056abs.htm>, that 
provides a nice background on the publish-subscribe model based on 
subjects or topics.  One of the authors published an earlier draft, The 
Many Faces of Publish/Subscribe 
<http://www.daimi.au.dk/%7Ethomasr/Wearable/eugster-al_publish-subscribe.pdf>.  
These articles provide addtional references to publish/subscribe event 
distribution systems. 

The following provides additional reference information not contained in 
the above articles.

SNMPv3 uses a crude form of topics.  The  snmpTargetAddrTagList object, 
discussed in section 4.1.1, in RFC 3413 
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3413.txt> (full standard) provides a 
means to specifiy _locally_coordinated_ topics, for example, "acme", 
"router", or "host".  Essentially, a subscriber provides a list of tags, 
describing topics, for which they wish to receive notifications. There 
is no global coordination of topics and the values provided by instances 
of  the snmpTargetAddrTagList object are application specific.

The syslog 
<http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/syslog-charter.html>working group of 
the IETF has published RFC 3164 
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3164.txt> (informational), describing 
the BSD syslog protocol.  This syslog protocol uses "facilities" in the 
place of topics.  Facilities are basically subsytems or daemons running 
on a UNIX host.  This working group has a work-in-progress draft for a 
SYSLOG-MIB 
<http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-syslog-device-mib-05.txt> 
(uri subject to change over time...) that essentially models the 
semantics of the BSD syslog protocol as a MIB module.  This MIB module 
also serves to montior the syslog daemon.  There is also a 
work-in-progress generalizing the syslog protocol 
<http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-syslog-protocol-03.txt>.  
Section 4.1.3 describes "facility" in a more general manner than the BSD 
syslog protocol, and states:

   The facility is primarily a way to filter messages at the receiver.
   It is a numerical value. There exist some traditional facility code
   semantics for the codes in the range from 0 to 23. These semantics
   are not closely followed by all vendors, softwares and devices.
   Therefore, no specifc semantics for facility codes are implied in
   this document.

   FACILITY is just a sender-supplied numerical identifier that can be
   used for filtering by the receiver. The facility in itself does not
   have any semantics. Semantics MUST be applied by site configuration
   (through the site's administrator).

   Any implementation of this document MUST support free configuration
   of the FACILITY on the sender.

In the disman <http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/disman-charter.html> 
working group of the IETF, as Andrea mentioned during the F2F, there is 
work-in-progress, disman-alarm-mib 
<http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-disman-alarm-mib-18.txt>, 
harmonized with ITU work (M.3100, X.733, X.736).  This MIB contains a 
couple of defintions-  IANAItuProbableCause, that provides a list of ITU 
probable cause values, and, IANAItuEventType, that provides the ITU 
event type value. 

 From the W3C, The OWL Web Ontology Language 
<http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-owl-semantics-20040210/>, uses RDF 
<http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-rdf-syntax-19990222/>, to define and 
refine vocabulary.  This is likely overkill for WSDM notification 
topics.  Likely there are CIMs from the DMTF (I understand that Andrea 
will provide references to these...) providing models that offer obvious 
base (and extensible ?) topics for WSDM event notifications.

Regards,

Mark