Solutions Revisited: Thin Software LayersMuch mention has been made in this book about thin software layers in the client, middleware, and server components of NMS. Why is this a desirable proposition?
Thin software strikes a balance between form and function ”the code size and complexity are minimized while the overall function is optimized. Code size is minimized by the use of details like meaningful default database values and flow-through provisioning. These in turn help avoid spaghetti code because, for example, the data sent for provisioning is valid for passing directly into SNMP setRequest messages. That is, the provisioning code does not need to validate the data it receives; instead, it can be written straight out to the network. The same applies where the NMS carries out extensive reads from the network, for example, during an IP discovery procedure. MIB objects are read from NEs and these match expected column values in the database. So, in the same way as for provisioning, the discovery code does not have to carry out large amounts of validation and data manipulation. |