OSI-MAPS

• Conformance 

• Interoperability

• API (Application Programming Interface)  

• Diagnostic Aid 

• Standards 

• OSI Application Developer 

• Transport Stack Multiplexor (OSI-TMUX) 

• System Requirements 

• Complementary Products
  

The OSI-MAPS software package is the implementation of the "Minimal OSI Upper Layers" and conformant to the document "ISO/IEC ISP 11188 - Part 3: Minimal OSI Upper Layer facilities". It includes the minimal subset of ACSE, Presentation and Session Services and Protocols necessary to support both OSI and non-OSI connection-oriented applications that have basic communication requirements. The package meets the requirements of the TMN Transaction Oriented applications based on CMISE/CMIP and ROSE.

OSI-MAPS enables application programs to establish, use and release associations with peer application entities using the OSI Upper Layers Protocols. The package is implemented as a library of ANSI C functions for use with the Windows NT Operating System. The OSI-MAPS API provides programmatic access to a subset of the services defined in the ISO 8649 ACSE and ISO 8822 Presentation Service Definitions. The OSI-MAPS implementation of the ACSE and Presentation services is entirely based on a subset of the X/Open ACSE/Presentation Services API (XAP). 

Conformance 

OSI-MAPS has been implemented and tested in conformance with the guidelines contained in :

ISO/IEC ISP 11188-3 Information Technology - International Standardized Profile - Common Upper Layer Requirements - Part 3: Minimal OSI Upper Layer facilities.

Interoperability 

Interoperability tests are performed with a variety of systems as part of the OSI-MAPS validation and quality assurance process.

API (Application Programming Interface) 

Conforms to a subset of the X/Open CAE Specification (September 1993) ACSE/Presentation Services API (XAP), Published by X/Open Company Ltd., U. K.

1. XAP Model
   XAP states that a standardized API programming interface to the connection oriented services of the Association Control Service Element (ACSE) and to the Presentation Layer of the seven-Layer OSI Reference Model must provide the following: 
   

   • Functions to interact with an XAP provider and send/receive primitives to establish use and release associations between a user written application and a peer application entity. 

   • Set of environment variables to store information related to the current association.
     

2. Service user
   The XAP service user is an application that requires the use of XAP services in order to perform its task. This definition could be mapped onto the application-entity as stated by the OSI Reference Model (ISO 7498).

3. XAP Instance
   An XAP instance is the collection of information required to establish and maintain an association with a peer application. The XAP functions ap_open() and ap_close() allow the service user to create and close an XAP instance.

4. XAP Environment
   The XAP environment is the set of all information needed to establish and maintain an association with a peer entity. The service user may inquire or change the association characteristics by reading or modifying the attribute values, either before or after the association has been established.
   
   XAP offers a set of functions to read and write the XAP environment attributes:ap_init_env() to initialize the environment and allocate space for the entire set of attributes. 
   ap_get_env() to get the value of a specified readable attribute. 
   ap_set_env() to set the value of a specified writeable attribute. 
   ap_free() to free the space allocated for a specified attribute. 
   
   Functions and Primitives
   
   The XAP functions allow the service user to create, manage and close the XAP instance, update the XAP environment, exchange with peer entities the XAP primitives for the association establishment, and the release and transfer of the user data. The user_data and control_data parameters allow the service user, respectively, to send/receive XAP primitives to/from the peer and to override some of the environment attributes while sending or receiving.

5. User Data
   Most XAP primitives allow for user data parameter specification that are usually PDUs of the application and must be encoded/decoded by the service user.

6. OSI-MAPS Functions 
   ap_bind(), ap_close(), ap_error(), ap_free(), ap_get_env(), ap_init_env(), ap_look(), ap_open(), ap_poll(), ap_set_env(), ap_rcv(), ap_snd()

7. OSI-MAPS Primitives 
   A-ASSOC, A-RELEASE, A-ABORT, A-PABORT, P-DATA
   

Diagnostic Aid 
OSI-MAPS provides facilities to aid application troubleshooting and maintenance. The user application can monitor the flow of information exchanged at the user level interface, at the Transport level interface and at the interface of the internal modules which makeup OSI-MAPS software product. At each level the trace can be enabled or disabled at runtime by selecting one or more classes of events to be traced and where the output information is to be directed.

• Upper-Trace
  This level of tracing collects the information exchanged through the OSI-MAPS API.

• Internal-Trace
  This level of tracing collects the information generated internal to the OSI-MAPS software.

• Lower-Trace
  This level of tracing collects the information exchanged through the interface between the OSI-MAPS provider and the Transport service provider.
  

Standards 
OSI-MAPS supports the following protocols:

• ACSE ISO 8649, 8650 (Association Control Service Element) 

• Presentation ISO 8822,8823 

• Session ISO 8326, 8327 
  

OSI Application Developer 

• Interface description for the XAP program interfaces. 

• Appropriate dlls, Libraries and include files for application using XAP program interface. 

• Sample application in 'C' demonstrating the use of Upper Layers services. 

Transport Stack Multiplexor (OSI-TMUX) 
OSI-TMUX stands for Transport Stack Multiplexor. It offers a Berkeley Sockets style API called TMUX Sockets Interface to applications above and enables communication with any of the three Transport stacks namely OSI-LAN, OSI-WAN and Microsoft TCP-IP at the same time.

The OSI-TMUX can also optionally offer the RFC-1006 functionality that is required to run OSI-MAPS over the Windows NT native Microsoft TCP/IP protocol stack.

An ISV can easily integrate their Upper Layers using this API and provide LAN, WAN and TCP-IP connectivity to OSI applications.


System Requirements 
Hardware - Intel PC with a suitable LAN or WAN communication board
Software - MS-Windows NT V4.0


Complementary Products

• OSI-LAN product implements the ISO Standards Transport Class 4 and other layers. An ISV can easily integrate their Upper Layers using this API to provide LAN connectivity.

• OSI-WAN product implements the ISO Standards Transport Classes 0 and 2, over ITU X.25 Packet switching protocol. An ISV can easily integrate their Upper Layers using winsock-2 compliant API to provide WAN connectivity.

• OSI-CMIP product offers the OSI CMIS/CMIP and ROSE protocol standards. The package runs on top of the OSI-MAPS product and offers the CMISE Services through a ANSI C language library API. The package is targeted towards the Telecommunications Management Network (TMN) applications.
  The package also includes a ASN.1 Compiler for User Data encoding and decoding purposes.