SNMP is at least a real standard, well several real standards, that are sometimes even followed. The big problem with SNMP is that the MIBs have to be handled

SNMP is at least a real standard, well several real standards, that are sometimes even followed. The big problem with SNMP is that the MIBs have to be handled out of band. If there was some part of the standard where you could query the device to get its MIB in some standard format it would be so so much better. The daemon could be small because it wouldn't have to ship with hundreds of megabytes of data for devices built over the past 40 years. You wouldn't have to go on a hunt to track down where the vendor hid the MIBs for oddball and obsolete equipment, often times only available with a support contract on a website that was decommissioned years ago. Alternatively it could have a query type that gives you a description of every field, so when you walk the tree you get all of the data that you would otherwise need the MIB for.