Overview

The Cisco VPN Solutions Center: MPLS Solution software is accompanied by four sets of application-programming interfaces (APIs) with which to integrate MPLS VPN features with source code for new or existing third-party network-management software.

As interfaces to underlying CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture) server, API files are supplied using the CORBA Interface Definition Language (IDL). Before using these IDL-based API files, you must compile them using a IDL compiler to generate implementation files in the supported target language of your choosing.

API Sets

Here are the API sets supplied with the Cisco VPN Solutions Center: MPLS Solution, Release 1.0:

Some detail is supplied in the following sections.

VPN Service Model APIs

The VPN Service Model APIs consist of the following IDL files:

CiscoVpnServiceModel.idl
CiscoVsmFWCreator.idl
CiscoVsmSRCreator.idl
CiscoVsmBrowser.idl
CiscoVsmExceptions.idl

Provisioning APIs

The Provisioning APIs consist of the following IDL files:

CiscoVPIM.idl
CiscoVPIMDL.idl
CiscoVpnServiceRequest.idl
CiscoVPIMExceptions.idl

Task Manager APIs

The Task Manager APIs consist of the following IDL files:

CiscoTaskServiceModel.idl
CiscoTaskManagedObjects.idl
CiscoTaskFactory.idl
CiscoTaskExceptions.idl
CiscoStream.idl
CiscoTime.idl

SLA and Account Monitor APIs

The SLA and Account Monitor APIs consist of the following IDL files:

CiscoAcctMonitor.idl
CiscoSlaManager.idl

Collection Helper APIs

The Collection Helper APIs consist of the following IDL files:

DCBFWCollection.idl
DCBFWDataSet.idl
DCBFWQuery.idl
DCDataOwnerSource.idl
DCDirectory.idl
DCDSDeviceDataSet.idl

Programmatic Practices and Limitations

Here are some generally applicable issues regarding the Cisco VPN Solutions Center APIs with related discussions in the sections to follow:

Supported CORBA Implementations

IDL files that comprise the APIs for the Cisco VPN Solutions Center: MPLS Solution are tested and validated as compiled using the IDL compilers supplied with a list of vendor-specific CORBA implementations. For Cisco VPN Solutions Center: MPLS Solution, Release 1.0, the APIs are supported for use with the Orbix 3.0.1 CORBA implementation.

While compliance with the CORBA specification is required of the individual CORBA vendors, Cisco cannot ensure successful use of its IDL files for each CORBA implementation without proper testing each API against each implementation.

Target Languages

The CORBA specification lists a set of target languages for which IDL mappings are defined. Of the CORBA-supported target languages, C++ and Java are supported for Cisco VPN Solutions Center: MPLS Solution, Release 1.0.

Data Types

Where possible and reasonable, primitive data types are used as the bases for defining more meaningful types to enhance readability of the API source files.

Exception Handling

The exception-handling scheme employed by the APIs for Cisco VPN Solutions Center: MPLS Solution, Release 1.0 exercise the CORBA standard exception mechanism. Exceptions are defined locally for each API set and are raised by operations within the module and interface declarations that they support.

Table of Contents

Overview