MIB Designer may be used to visually compare MIB modules. This unequaled feature shows the differences between two MIB modules independently from their formatting. It provides an easy way of tracking the differences between releases of MIB modules.
In order to be able to compare two MIBs, they must be named differently and both opened. If both MIBs have to same module name, then they can be imported one after the other. In doing so, the first MIB module imported should be the older revision of the MIB and saved under a different name before the second one is imported.
The current MIB module may be compared with any other loaded MIB module by selecting the menu item. After selecting the comparative MIB module the objects of the current module that differ from objects of that module will be displayed with an altered background color in the MIB tree as shown by Figure 2-30.
Figure2-30: Example Comparison of two AGENTX-MIBs
The colors have the following meanings:
Green – The object has been added to the current module, thus it is not part of the comparative module.
Yellow – The object differs from the corresponding object of the comparative module.
Magenta – The object has been changed in an incompatible way, for example, an OBJECT-TYPE has been changed into an OBJECT-IDENTIFIER. Thus, magenta indicates obvious violations of SMI rules.
Black – The object has been deleted by changing its STATUS to obsolete.
For yellow and dark gray colored objects only, parts that differ from the corresponding comparative object are shown in the SMI preview as underlined text (provided that HTML preview is enabled). An object and its comparative counterpart can be displayed side by side by choosing the menu item from the object node’s context menu.
The results of a comparison can be cleared for the current module by choosing from the main menu.