The purpose of this Recommendation is to define an interface through which a manager can subscribe to an agent for receiving notifications. This Recommendation provides the requirements and analysis phase of one of the common management services: Notification management in a protocol neutral way. It defines, for the purpose of subscribing to an agent for receiving notifications, the basic requirements that shall be fulfilled by a notification interface.

Agents generate notifications of events about occurrences within the network. Different kinds of events carry different kinds of information. An agent emits notifications. A manager receives notifications. This Recommendation defines an interface through which a manager can subscribe to an agent for receiving notifications and the information model used to define specific notification types in other Recommendations.

Notifications are sent to managers without the need for managers to periodically check for new notifications.

This Recommendation provides the protocol neutral model definition for notification. It defines, for the purpose of subscribing to an agent for receiving notifications, the information observable and controlled by the management system's client, and it also specifies the semantics of the interactions used to carry this information. It also defines the information common to all notifications.

An agent may emit one or multiple types of notifications, defined as extensions of the notification information object class (IOC) defined herein. This Recommendation defines a mechanism that a manager can use to determine the types of notifications supported by an agent. It also defines a mechanism (subscribe and unsubscribe operations) that a manager can use to specify the type of notifications an agent should emit to a manager during subscription. It also defines a mechanism (getSubscriptionIds operation) that a manager can use to check which types of notifications it has subscribed to. A manager can set and change filtering criteria applicable during the life-cycle of a subscription and subscribe to filters already configured by another manager. A manager can also exercise flow control on an agent's emission of notifications (suspendSubscription, resumeSubscription operations).

A manager can create several subscriptions. This will result in multiple subscriptions. As far as the agent is concerned, notifications are sent to multiple destinations with different filtering criteria.

This Recommendation specifies the information that is carried in all notifications. Further information is defined by specializations of the Notification IOC.

How a manager discovers the agent's address or reference (so that the manager can invoke an operation) is outside the scope of this Recommendation.