User guide

12-1
AlliedView NMS Administration Guide (Northbound Interface)
12. Northbound Interface
12.1 Overview
A northbound interface on an NMS/EMS allows other software applications (higher level network management systems) to
communicate with (or manage) the lower level NMS without the user acting on the lower level NMS directly. In many cases
this interface is intended for higher level network management systems communicating with devices from different vendors
(with vendor specific device communication interfaces) using element management systems from those vendors that provide a
well known interface that can be used by the higher level network management software.
There are several platform-independent technologies of software communication used to implement the northbound interface
(e.g. CORBA, XML, RMI, etc.) and Apache Axis will be used to provide the northbound interface in AlliedView NMS. Axis
is an implementation of SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) which is not only XML based but also provides APIs that
support web services standards.
The following table lists the capabilities for the northbound interface APIs. Note that read and provisioning operations are
available in release 10.0.
TABLE 12-1 Northbound Interface APIs for Release 10.0
Capability Detail
Retrieve network inventory objects
from NMS based on criteria set by the
client.
Provide APIs for retrieving network inventory data based on type and allow
client application to specify other criteria. In addition the API will allow cli-
ents to retrieve any other network inventory data from the NMS by specify-
ing the matching criteria.
Retrieve network events available in
NMS database based on criteria set by
the client.
Allow clients to retrieve network events from the NMS. The client can spec-
ify criteria of the network events to be retrieved. Only events that match the
selected criteria will be retrieved.
Retrieve alarms available in NMS
database based on criteria set by the
client.
Allow clients to retrieve alarms from the NMS. The client can specify criteria
of the alarms to be retrieved. Only alarms that match the selected criteria will
be retrieved.
Retrieve network events and alert fil-
ters that are currently configured in
NMS.
Allow clients to retrieve all event and alert filters configured in NMS. These
filters in NMS could be setup to perform certain operations when a new
event or alert is received.
Retrieve trap and events parsers that
are currently configured in NMS.
Allow clients to retrieve all trap and event parsers configured in NMS. These
parsers in NMS are used to modify any properties of the trap or event in
NMS (by default these are used to set the severity)
Retrieve the number of network events
or alarms in the NMS.
Allow clients to retrieve total counts for all events and alarms from the NMS.
Alarm counts can also be retrieved for the specified severity.
Retrieve the history of an alarm The NMS maintains the history of an alarm based on failure object (entity)
which will be available through this API. The client will specify the failure
object of the alert to get the history.