State dictionaries: an overview

To group graphic operations for displaying states and to make sets of relevant states available, JViews TGO provides several state dictionaries based on worldwide standards. JViews TGO associates with each state in a dictionary the drawing mode of the telecom object holding that state. Therefore, the drawing is updated when the state of the graphic object is modified. This association between a state and a graphic drawing is detailed throughout this section.

The dictionaries available in the JViews TGO library are presented with their definitions and icons. The development of these dictionaries is based on current telecom standards combined with hands-on experience.

The OSI state dictionary is based on the standard ISO/IEC 10164-2, ITU-T X.731: State Management Function.
The Bellcore state dictionary is based on Bellcore GR-1093: Generic State Requirements for Network Elements.
The SNMP state dictionary is based on RFC 1213: Management Information Base for Network Management of TCP/IP based internets: MIB-II.
The SONET state dictionary is dedicated to the states of reporting transport links.
The Misc state dictionary includes additional states that are absent from other standards, but are useful to several network operators.
The Performance state dictionary includes additional states that are absent from other standards, but are useful to model numeric values such as performance indicators or service levels.
The SAN state dictionary includes additional states that are absent from other standards, but are useful to model numeric values such as storage indicators.
The Alarm state dictionary is the state model proposed by JViews TGO to display the set of alarms assigned to a telecom object.
The Trap state dictionary is the state model proposed by JViews TGO and based on RFC 1157 – A Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) – to display the set of traps assigned to a telecom object.

Reference tables for the graphical representations of these state dictionaries are contained in Lookup tables for state visuals.

Primary and secondary states

The OSI, Bellcore, SNMP and SONET state dictionaries all contain the notion of primary and secondary states. The difference between a primary and a secondary state is that a telecom object will usually carry one and only one primary state, whereas it can carry a number of secondary states.

Dictionary nomenclatures

While the dictionaries described in the following sections contain the notion of primary and secondary states, the terms traditionally used to describe them are not always the same.

The Bellcore and SNMP dictionaries use the terms ‘primary state’ and ‘secondary state.’
The OSI dictionary uses the terms ‘state’ and ‘status.’
The SONET dictionary ties the notion of ‘secondary state’ to protection switch request indicators.

For our purposes, we will use the terms primary state and secondary state in a generic sense.

Primary states allowing secondary states

The applicability of secondary states in the OSI and Bellcore models depends on primary states. Most secondary states can be set on a telecom object only if the object is already in a predefined state. For instance, the OSI Power-Off status can be set only on an object that is out-of-service, that is, with the OSI Disabled primary state.

The three conditions that determine whether a given secondary state applies to a telecom object are:

Out Of Service (OOS)
In service, Carrying No Traffic (NT)
In service, Carrying Traffic (CT)

These conditions represent a combination of primary states in all state dictionaries.

The applicability of secondary states on given primary states can be seen in Icon-based representations of OSI secondary states .

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States