1.2 Steps involved in Building a TL1 Agent
The TL1 protocol is the backbone of network management in the telecommunications domain. Although TL1 is simple and easy to use, complex application development becomes very difficult. The AdventNet Agent Toolkit Java Edition provides intuitive and innovative tools for rapid development of robust TL1 agents with much ease.
The Agent Toolkit uses the concept of XML driven TCS files (TL1 Command Set file) which defines the management information for the TL1 Agent. The TCS file is the equivalent of the MIB in an SNMP Agent.
1.2 Steps Involved in Building TL1 Agent
Following are the steps involved in building a TL1 Agent using the AdventNet Agent Toolkit.
Creating a TL1 Command Set (TCS) file using TL1MessageBuilder.
Creating the Data Set (dat) file corresponding to the TCS file using TL1MessageBuilder.
Generating Code for the TCS file using TL1 Compiler
Compiling the Code using TL1 Compiler
Testing the TL1 agent using TL1 Browser
The first step in agent development is defining the inputs for the Agent. For a TL1Agent the command set input is in the form of a TCS file (TL1 command set file) which is in XML format. They can either be newly created TCS files or already existing TCS files. The TL1MessageBuilder provided with the Agent Toolkit can be used for creating new TCS files and modifying the existing ones.
The Data Set file contains information that are part of the TL1 Input Message. Data Set file will be useful when more than one set of values for a particular command code is to be sent to the TL1 Agent. Data set will be used in the manager side for querying the agent. The possible set of values for a particular command can be defined in the Data Set file. This eliminates the need to type in the values each time for querying during runtime. The TL1MessageBuilder provided with the Agent Toolkit can be used for creating Data Set files.
The next step in building the TL1 Agent is to generate code for the TCS file. This can be done using the TL1Compiler tool provided with the Agent Toolkit. This robust tool takes the TCS file as input and generates code for the same. User specific instrumentation can be done on the generated code before compilation
After generating the code for the given TCS file. Compiling the generated code creates the complete TL1 Agent. Thus generation of code would be followed by compilation. Here the agent responds with the default values as the generated code is compiled as such. To retrieve values from the agent according to his application then he can instrument the code as required. On saving and compiling the sources after instrumentation, the agent would respond with the instrumented values. The compilation and instrumentation of code can be done using the TL1Compiler tool itself.
After compiling the code generated for a particular TCS file and starting the agent, the agent can be tested from the TL1Browser tool provided with the Agent Toolkit. The TCS file for which code was generated and instrumented can be loaded in the TL1Browser to query the agent.