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Version 2.0 of MIB Smithy is a significant update that adds a number of new features and capabilities, including several built-in SNMP management tools with SNMPv1/v2c/v3 support, XML import/export support, support for custom compiler formats, and an exposed library core for SMI and SNMP script development and SMI document conversion with Tcl/Tk.

Significant Changes

• The “Build” menu now contains a “Settings” menu item to configure the build process.
• The Build Settings now allow specifying the directories for intermediate and output files, as well as the ability to mark individual files as dependencies to be excluded from the build. When marked as a dependency, a file will be validated and cross-checked, but will not generate any output files when compiled. This allows projects to include files whose presence is necessary to fully validate imported references, but are not necessary for the desired output.
• The Build Settings dialog also allows specification of Tcl commands to be evaluated to generate custom compiler output formats. Selecting “Custom Build” from the “Output Format” list enables the “Custom Build” tab of the dialog. Here you can specify a command to be evaluated before and after a build, to compile an individual module, to compile a file, and to “clean” the project (removing files generated by the custom compiler). Details on how to develop custom compiler formats will be available in the MIB Smithy 2.0 User’s Guide. (Profession Edition Only)
• Several new built-in SNMP management tools: MIB Browser, Table Viewer, SNMP Walk and SNMP Query. These tools support SNMPv1, SNMPv2 and SNMPv3 with both HMAC-MD5-96 and HMAC-SHA-96 authentication, as well as CBC-DES privacy. (CBC-DES supported in non-evaluation version only).
• The SMI/SNMP library core is now available as a dynamically loaded Tcl/Tk extension Documentation for the APIs will be forthcoming soon (there are a few items remaining to be implemented or changed in the libraries to make them a bit more flexible in some areas). The extension may be loaded into Tcl/Tk by adding the ‘lib/smithysdk’ directory to the ‘auto_path’ variable using the “package require smithysdk” command. (Tcl/Tk extension available in non-evaluation version only)
• Added ability to import and export modules to XML format according to the XML Schema proposal at http://www.muonics.com/XMLSMI/, which provides a much richer and more complete format from extant DTDs. A copy of the schema can also be found in the “docs” directory as “XML-SMI-2.0.xsd”. (“Preview” Only in evaluation version, “Export” Only in Standard Edition)
• Several SMI output-formatting improvements have been made, such as smarter recognition and joining of lines of paragraphs and minor speed improvements both in output generation and other areas.
• The “Preview” command in the main Edit menu and the popup menu for the Project Browser tree have been replaced by submenus that allow selection of either SMI or XML formats to be previewed as. The toolbar button continues to preview in normal SMI format.
• A warning is now issued if an object or textual convention of type ‘BITS’ neglects to assign a value to bit 0, which is loosely required by SMIv2.
• The Tcl/Tk core has been upgraded to version 8.4.2. This may result in some minor cosmetic changes in addition to the benefits of the bugs that have been fixed since the prior version used.
• New application icons in Windows version (no more Tk icon in the corner).
• Minor cosmetic and behavioral improvements to the icon trees (used by the MIB and Project browsers), including automatically making new items in the tree visible when created.
• Many core API improvements for the MIB Smithy SDK allowing for querying various properties–such as enumerations and size/range refinements, either “as declared” directly within the specified record, or “as inherited” from any derived-from types or other records.
• Added several RFC documents for the various SMI versions to the “docs” directory of the installation.

Miscellaneous Bug Fixes

• Type assignments in the Project Browser tree no longer appear to be expandable branches (no more [+] icon that serves no purpose).
• It was possible to cause a crash, if one were determined to do so intentionally, by doing something to generate an compiler error message longer than about 4K. This is no longer possible: all internal code for generating error messages incorporates bound limits.

Version 1.6 of MIB Smithy adds a number of extensions to the MOSY compiler format – some supported by other compilers and some not – to provide more complete information from the compiled MIB module. A complete specification for the new format is now available in the User’s Guide in the Muonics web site. Also included are a number of outstanding bugs that have been fixed in version 2.0 (which is currently in beta) that we felt warranted an interim release.
Continue reading MIB Smithy 1.6 Release

An updated XML Schema proposal for mapping SMI/MIB modules into XML has been published. The purpose of this proposal is to fix a number of bugs and limitations in the original proposal in an expired internet-draft from June 21, 2000 and to potentially move forward with publishing the document as an Informational RFC if there is sufficient interest (the current proposal has not been published as an internet-draft at this time, but will be if there is sufficient interest). Muonics plans to release support in MIB Smithy shortly for importing and exporting MIB modules from/to XML according to this schema, and input on the proposal is requested. Details of the proposal (its purpose, goals, etc.) and the complete schema can be found at:

http://www.muonics.com/XMLSMI/

We welcome comments from interested parties here, to support at muonics.com, or (most appropriately) the smixml mailing list maintained by folks over at the Technical University of Braunschweig. Information on the mailing list — subscription, archives, etc. — can be also be found at the above URL.

Version 1.5 of MIB Smithy is a significant update that adds support for several of the more obscure areas of the SMI that are rarely supported by other tools. This includes complete support for ‘module.descriptor’ forms for type and value references described by RFC 2578, section 3.2. This version also includes support for specifying the OID value for an imported module’s MODULE-IDENTITY in an importing module’s IMPORTS statement, allowing the importing module to locally reference a module by a different name. This feature, along with ‘module.descriptor’ references, allows modules to import and use symbols that would otherwise be ambiguous due to the modules or symbols having the same descriptor.
Continue reading MIB Smithy 1.5 Release

Miscellaneous Bug Fixes

• Skipped dependency warnings were erroneously switched to disabled by default in an earlier version. They are now on by default.
• An incorrect error would be generated for a typedef with INTEGER syntax and a DISPLAY-HINT. The error is now only generated if the INTEGER has an enumerated refinement.