Editing XML Management Protocol (section)

== '''Overview''' ==

While XMP is technically the name of Cartographer's management protocol, the acronym is usually used to describe the overall management framework.  A management framework usually consists of several parts including:

* A structure of management information or SMI
* A management protocol
* Management information

In theory, if a management framework has been properly designed, any one of the three components can be changed without unduly impacting the others.  This change is essentially what we have done with XMP as we have borrowed heavily from the Internet Management Framework's SMI and defined body of management information but have changed the management protocol.

=== Basic Architecture ===

Overall communication in XMP, and the layers of encapsulation, are depicted in the following figure.

<center>
<graphviz>
digraph P {
  graph[bgcolor="transparent"];
  rankdir=LR;
  label = "XMP Encapsulation";
  Entity [label = "Application or Agent"];
  XML [label = "XML encoding"];
  Entity -> XMP -> XML -> SSL -> TCP -> IP;
}
</graphviz>
</center>

Entities acting as managers initiate communication with agents.  Manager closes session when finished.