here is how I see the distinctions:
AvailabilitySituations relate to manageable resources that have and report state.
Create and Destroy relate to the act of creation or destruction of a resource (not necessarily manageable) or artifact but does not convey the resource's availability state. It simply conveys that the resource exists, not its operational state. This generally does not apply to a 'connection' per se since a 'connection' implies some degree of operationality so 'connection' events usually boil down to AvailabilitySituation or ConnectionSituation.
ConnectionSituation relates to a binding between a set of resources so that the resources are able to communicate in some way. It is not necessarily related to a physical 'wire' between two resources like routers for example.
ConfigureSituation relates to the act of changing some behavior or attribute of the managed resource. While the outcome of a configuration may result in the ability to connect (for example, a wireless NIC re-configuration from 802.11b to 802.11a) this situation is not directly related to 'connection' itself.
So a 'connection' needs to be defined crisply to know which of these apply.
Cases:
1) If a 'connection' is literally a wire between two manageable boxes then there is no act of creation (other than the mfr of the 'wire') and it is not a manageable resource and therefore does not have 'state'. Hence, a ConnectionSituation would be emitted by one or both of the connected resources.
2) if a NIC is installed into a backplane but needs device drivers to operate then the resource coming into existence would be announced with a CreateSituation. The new resource exists but is not available, The CreateSituation might initiate some management action that would load the drivers required by the NIC.
3) if the 'connection' is through an active device that is manageable, for example loading the device drivers for the new NIC in case 2, then the event would be an AvailabilitySituation since it can have state.
4) a manageable network device which has been available has been configured for a new quality of service. ConfigureSituation.
Finally, a single act of 'connecting' something may generate multiple events of different categories. For example, connecting a USB modem to a system might generate the following events:
1) CreateSituation - there is a new logical USB device.
2) AvailabilitySituation - the device drivers for the USB Modem have been loaded and the modem is now ready to be used.
3) ConfigureSituation - the modem has been configured to support V.92
4) RequestSituation - the modem has been asked to dial
5) ConnectSituation - the modem has negotiated and connected to the ISP
...
You have more experience with networking than I but I think the general rule of thumb would be to 'err' on the side of the higher precedent category if there is any uncertainty about category choice.
Thomas W. Studwell
Senior Technical Staff Member, Autonomic Computing Architecture
IBM Software Group
C151/Bldg 500
4205 S Miami Blvd, Durham, NC 27703
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studwell@us.ibm.com
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"Andrea Westerinen" <andreaw@cisco.com>
