2.7. Conformance Statements

It may be useful to define the acceptable lower-bounds of implementation, along with the actual level of implementation achieved. It is the purpose of the Conformance Statements for SNMPv2 document [15] to define the notation used for these purposes. There are two kinds of notations:

1. Compliance statements are used when describing requirements for agents with respect to object definitions. An ASN.1 macro, MODULE-COMPLIANCE, is used to concisely convey such requirements.

2. Capability statements are used when describing capabilities of agents with respect to object definitions. An ASN.1 macro, AGENT-CAPABILITIES, is used to concisely convey such capabilities.

Finally, collections of related objects are grouped together to form a unit of conformance. An ASN.1 macro, OBJECT-GROUP, is used to concisely convey the syntax and semantics of a group.