netconf meeting notes

[Juergen Schoenwaelder <j.schoenwaelder@iu-bremen.de>]

Attached are the notes that I took during the netconf meeting.

/js

-- 
Juergen Schoenwaelder		    International University Bremen
<http://www.eecs.iu-bremen.de/>	    P.O. Box 750 561, 28725 Bremen, Germany

Netconf WG meeting, 61st IETF, November 11, 2004

Slides will be posted on <http://www.ops.ietf.org/netconf/> after the
meeting.

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Agenda

- NETCONF WG Document Discussion
- AOB

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Review of changes since the last 03 draft. See the slides for the
detailed list of changes. No questions were raised regarding the
changes.

Working group last call is running so people interested should
carefully read the documents. Last call deadline is November 28, 
2004.

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Make sure that all data model issues are deferred to future work. This
basically affects the mechanism to retrieve session ids. One proposal
was to just do the instance document, others wanted to leave the
definition in with a big warning that the definition is non-normative
and subject to be replaced in the future. Yet others believed leaving
it in casts this into stone forever. Another suggestion was to use a
separate namespace so that this can be changed later on without
loosing backwards compatibility.

Who wants to have a minimal data model in the document? Rough
consensus in the room seems to be to have the session-id element
specified. Andy Bierman will check on the list with a concrete
proposal.

Any other issues? None were raised.

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Lock semantics. Wes Hardaker asks the question whether the lock should
prevent read access. Interaction between copy-config and locking. Wes
wants to have a recommendation that you should lock both configs if
you do a copy-config. Wes really wanted to have a statement that locks
should be raised together at the beginning of a transaction. Wes says
that this affects also the behavior of get-config while there is
someone modifying a configuration. The document should probably spell
out these issues so that NETCONF users do not make false assumptions.
Phil Shafer also suggests that there might be cases where one want to
get access to configuration data, even if there is an existing lock.

Wes says this is an instance of the general problem that the IETF does
a poor job in documenting how something is being used. Much much
policy does belong in the mechanism specification? People are
encouraged to write how to use NETCONF guides.

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The question was raised whether the XSD should be converted to RELAX
NG. The conclusion was that XSD for the protocol specification is fine
as it is read by protocol implementors, which is different from data
models which have a much larger audience of readers/writers.

The question was raised whether the time for data modeling is right
since several organizations are currently looking at this. Andy says
that there were always multiple data models and NETCONF won't change
that. There is a need to have common data models, the question is to
do bottom up or top down. The real hard part is to identify and agree
on the semantics.

Bert Wijnen raises the question whether this session turns into a
BOF. He suggests to close the NETCONF session and move this to an
informal discussion. Dave Harrington remarks that the question whether
NETCONF wants to be re-chartered is a WG discussion item. However,
since this topic was not on the agenda, the Bert suggested to close
the meeting and continue with an informal discussion.

WG meeting closed. Please read the drafts.

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