SNMP has a large embedded base in the general purpose computing market, CMIP is mandated in the telecommunications arena by the TMN standard, and CORBA
is recognised as the emerging standard covering distributed object oriented programming.

Each technology has its strength; thus full interoperability will enable designers to select the most appropriate technology to apply to any given problem. The Network Management Forum ISOInternet Management Coexistence (see reference IIMC) group has addressed SNMP/CMIP interoperability. Thus JIDM has chosen to concentrate on CMIP/CORBA and SNMP/CORBA interworking.

To enable interworking between management systems based on different technologies, it is necessary to be able to map between the relevant object models and to build on this to provide mechanisms to handle protocol and behavior conversions on the domain boundaries.In order to be able to interwork between a particular pair of management reference models, there are two aspects that need to be defined:
• A translation scheme between the different object models of both management
reference models, referred to as Specification Translation
• A dynamic conversion mechanism between the protocols and behaviors used in both
domains, referred to as Interaction

Translation This allows objects in one domain to be represented in the other domain and the interactions can be governed by the domain of choice rather than by the domain in which the target object is implemented. Besides, this should be done without either party being aware of the conversion. JIDM presents a set of facilities to provide interoperability between CORBA and alternative telecommunication management models, specifically OSI management and Internet management. As described above, two aspects need to be defined:
Specification Translation and Interaction Translation.

For a particular pair of domains,
the specification of the mapping is split into two parts:
· The first part, is referred to as Specification Translation, and is expressed as a mechanism for translating between GDMO (the object definition language used in conjunction with CMIP — see reference GDMO), SNMP MIB Definition language
(see references SNMPv2 and ISMIv2), and CORBA’s Interface Definition Language .
· The second part, is known as Interaction Translation and covers the mechanisms to dynamically convert between the protocols in one domain and the protocols within the other without either party necessarily being aware of the conversion.

This allows objects in one domain to be represented in the other domain and the interactions can be governed by the domain of choice rather than by the domain in which the target object is implemented. For example, an object in the CORBA domain should be able to interact with a GDMO object as if it were in the CORBA domain, ideally without having to know that the target object is in a different domain. Naturally the converse is also true, that an OSI Manager should be able to manage CORBA objects as if they were defined in GDMO (this requires the reverse mapping.