steve@teletron.UUCP (05/27/87)
We would like to know the general specifications for MAP
& TOP. Can anyone provide us the information ?
Thank you in advance.
stevefair@ucbarpa.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (06/07/87)
I attended a talk on MAP (the Manufacturering Automation Protocol) last fall and came away with two observations: 1. MAP is simply a packaging of the ISO protocol suite on top of an IEEE 802.2 (or was that 802.4?) token passing broadband LAN. 2. There are (if you use the ISO Reference Model terminology) NO application protocol standards within MAP. That is to say that you can get the bits from your computer to that robot on the factory floor, but there is no standard for interpretation of what the bits mean. The MAP specification comes mostly from General Motors, and thus they should be able to provide documentation for it. Can anyone explain what TOP (the Technical Office Protocol) suite is about, and whose idea it was? Erik E. Fair ucbvax!fair fair@ucbarpa.berkeley.edu
paulh@hplsla.UUCP (06/15/87)
I've got a November '85 version of the TOP "spec".
TOP stands for Technical and Office Protocols. The Boeing Co.
seems to be one of the major drivers. TOP and MAP share the
ISO layers 2 through 6, but differ in the physical and application
layer.
The layer that defines the interpretation of bits is the presentation
layer, layer 7 in OSI. ISO seems to be going for the Abstract Syntax
Notation 1 for that layer. The ASN.1 standard is identical to the
CCITT X.409 Recomendation. ASN consists of a data declaration standard,
which looks roughly like Pascal, and a data encoding standard, which is
binary but could be ASCII.
All of the information above dates from 1985. I'm not sure what's
going on with it right now. I'd sure like to know.
Here's some document titles and addresses:
Information Processing Systems - Open System Interconnection:
Specification of Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1),
ISO DP 8824
Information Processing Systems - Open System Interconnection:
Basic Encoding Rules for Abstract Syntax Notation One (ASN.1),
ISO DP 8825
ISO documents from:
Ms. Frances Schrotter
ANSI
ISO TC97/SC6 Secretariat
1430 Broadway New York, NY 10018
(212) 354-3300
TOP documents from:
Boeing Computer Services
Network Services Group
P.O. Box 24346, M/S 7C-16
Seattle, WA 98124-0346
Again, those addresses are a year and a half old. There's also another
two pages of documents referenced in that TOP specification. I'll mail
a photocopy to anyone interested. I'd recommend getting the current
TOP document first, however.
If anyone does happen to figure out what's going on with those standards,
please post here or send me some mail.
Paul Hall ihnp4!{hplabs|harpo}!hp-pcd!hplsla!paulh
(206) 335-2252 paulh_hall%50@hpa100
Hewlett-Packard Co. 8600 Soper Hill Rd Everett, WA 98205-1298