Integrating the OSI and the CORBA Architectures for Systems Management

In the ESPRIT II project SysMan, the EPFL was in charge of integrating the OSI and the distributed objects technologies for systems management. We worked on specification translation between IDL and GDMO (in both directions), and in the provision of gateways. Adapter-agents allow distributed applications to be managed in OSI. Conversely, proxy-agents enable OSI managed objects to be accessed as ordinary distributed objects. Our work in Sysman allowed us to uncover some of the weaknesses of the OSI systems management architecture. When integrating the worlds of distributed objects and OSI, we need to revisit the features of OSI and to adapt them. We should not blindly adopt them.