HP (Hewlett-Packard) HP OpenView Vantagepoint – Operation Manual for UNIX User Manual

Integration Facilities of the HP OpenView NNM Core Platform

The remaining fields contain agent status, configuration, and metrics.
The read-write fields may be written from your integrated application
(SNMP “sets”), or from VPO applications. All fields can be read from your
application (SNMP “gets”), from the SNMP MIB Browser, or plotted over
time by the xnmgraph application. Data may also be included in trap
messages sent by the agent.

There are two methods available to read or write agent MIB data:

❏ use the Simple Network Management Protocol Application

Programming C-Interface (C functions of the SNMP-API)

❏ use the commands snmpget, snmpset, and snmptrap.

This API allows to establish SNMP communication sessions for
exchanging SNMP messages. The available functions and their
functionality are listed in Table 1. The table should suffice to create an
impression of what can be achieved using the functions of the API.

Formally a SNMP message is called a PDU (protocol data unit).
Basically, there are functions for opening and closing SNMP sessions, for
creating, and manipulating PDUs, for sending and receiving SNMP
PDUs, and for manually retransmitting PDUs.

Most of the API functions are available in two flavors. One flavor is to be
used in event driven X applications. Functions of this flavor have the
letter “X” in their name. The other flavor is for use in conventional
programs. Functions of those two flavors may not be mixed in one
program.

For more information on this API, seethe corresponding man pages and
the SNMP Developer’s Guide and Reference. This manual provides a
good introduction to the underlying concepts, a description of the
corresponding data structures, and scenarios for proper use of the
functions.