16.1.2 Implementing the MIB

Our example only implements a fraction of the attributes, those that are used in this tutorial. The others are simply initialized with a plausible value. Using DEFVAL statements in our MIB, we could force mibgen to generate MBeans with user-defined default values for attributes. As this is not done in our example, mibgen provides a plausible default value according to the variable type.

Our implementations of MIB behavior are contained in the classes with the Impl suffix. These implementation classes extend those that are generated by mibgen so that we can regenerate them without overwriting our customizations.

Here is a summary of the implementation shown in the agent example:

• InterfacesImpl.java - adds a notification listener to the IfTable object, then creates two table entries with plausible values and adds them to the table; this class is associated with:

  • TableEntryListenerImpl.java - the listener for table notifications when entries are added or removed: it prints out the values of a new table entry and prints a message when an entry is removed

  • IfEntryImpl.java - implements a table entry and provides an internal method for switching the OperStatus variable that triggers a trap (see Example 16–4); this method is not exposed in the MBean interface, so it is only available to the code of this agent application

• SnmpImpl.java - initializes and implements variables of the SNMP group; many of these are state variables of the SNMP agent, so we call the getter methods of the SNMP adaptor object to return the information

• SystemImpl.java - initializes the System group variables with realistic values

The SnmpImpl.java and SystemImpl.java files provide code that you can reuse when you need to implement these common SNMP groups.