Active Objects in TMN

Abstract

Telecommunications Management Network (TMN) systems use the object-oriented information modelling techniques and communication facilities provided by OSI Systems Management (SM). TMN interfaces are specified in terms of rather passive Managed Objects (MOs) with prespecified behaviour. In this paper, we propose the concept of Active Managed Objects (AMOs) as the means to specify and express arbitrary management functions (including those specified in [1]) through a suitable scripting language. AMOs may be delegated to a TMN application in agent role and function close to other managed objects they access. Such a facility increases the intelligence and autonomy of TMN applications and enables the expression of management functions with arbitrary intelligence. Also, since it uses the normal TMN mechanisms for information modelling and access (GDMO, CMIS/P), it could be potentially standardised. In this paper, we describe the AMO concept, examine the information model and scripting language aspects and present our implementation experience.