MICA: A MID Compiler in Java

Abstract

Management Information Bases (MIBs) define the attributes of objects managed by the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). An SNMP application uses the information in one or more MIBs to learn the attributes of the objects supported by the managed devices in a network. MIBs in source form are not directly usable; they must first be compiled into a format acceptable to the SNMP application. Java's built-in network facilities make it an ideal language for writing SNMP applications, so the need arises for a Java-based MIB compiler. The MICA project is the design and implementation a Java class library that treats a MIB as an abstract data type (ADT). Java-based SNMP applications use this ADT to compile MIBs and extract their information.