[SNMP4J] OID / MIB Relation

[PHIL BERGSTRESSER]

Matt,
    Two parts to your question. One is SNMP general, and the other is
SNMP4J particular. I will answer the former.
    A MIB is the interface specification document defining the
management objects in the agent that a manager can reference (snmpGet),
possibly alter (snmpSet) and receive unsolicited (traps/notifications).
It is written in a machine readable language called the Structure of
Managed Information (SMI). The named objects within the MIB document are
called objects and have a numeric definition called an Object Identifier
(OID) which is what is transmitted via the SNMP transmission protocol to
the managed agent. The OID is composed of a sequence of numeric
sub-identifiers which define its unique place in the universal OID tree
structure. In practice, the term OID is often casually used synonomously
for the named object, but the objects in the MIB are named variables and
not true ohjects with OO ramifications.
    Now how you get to translate MIB object names to the numeric OID (a
sequence of numeric sub-identifiers) and back is unique to each network
management application. I'll give someone else a chance to answer that
part of your question for how to deal with that in SNMP4J.
    HTH,
Phil Bergstresser
ADTRAN SNMP Design Engineer


-----Original Message-----
From: snmp4j-bounces at agentpp.org [mailto:snmp4j-bounces at agentpp.org] On
Behalf Of Matt Klinker
Sent: Friday, November 04, 2005 9:13 AM
To: snmp4j at agentpp.org
Subject: [SNMP4J] OID / MIB Relation

I apologize if this question has been covered and I'm just unable to
locate
:) I'm new to working with SNMP at all, and I just found this project
yesterday. What I'm trying to determine, is what is the relationship
between a OID and MIB? From my understanding, a MIB just provide syntax,
and a readable equivlant to an OID? In that case, is there a way that I
can send a request using the string representation? In all the examples
I've been able to locate, a request is made in the format of
1.3.6.1.2.2.1.0 where as I would like to say something like "SysDescr"
or whatever else is defined in my MIB. I can't seem to find any classes
in the API that relate to MIB, just simply an OID class that assumes you
have the numeric formated command.

On a side note, as I say, I'm new to a lot of this terminology and
practice, and would appreciate if anyone could point me to some good
solid reference material. I've been reading a lot, but mostly it seems
to be high level stuff repeated over and over.

Thanks for taking the time to read this :) I'd appreciate any
help/direction!
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