minutes for NETCONF WG at IETF #61

[Andy Bierman <abierman@cisco.com>]

OPS Area
NETCONF WG Meeting Minutes
IETF #61
November 11, 2004
Minutes by Juergen Schoenwaelder, edited by Andy Bierman

Agenda

  - NETCONF WG Document Discussion
  - AOB

Minutes

1. Status

The meeting started with a review of changes in the Protocol I-D 
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.

2. Data Models

The group agreed to defer all data model issues 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.

The group discussed the need for a minimal data model in the 
document, and was polled on whether to contain a minimal
data model or no data model at all.  Rough consensus in the 
room seemed to be to have the minimal data model (session-id element)
specified. Andy Bierman will check on the list with a concrete
proposal. 

After the meeting, a proposal was made on the mailing list
to remove the netconf-state data model completely, since the
session-id of the lock owner is returned in an <rpc-error>
element.

Any other netconf-state data model issues? None were raised.

3. 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. How much
policy does belong in the mechanism specification? People are
encouraged to write how to use NETCONF guides.

4. XSD vs. Relax NG

The question was raised whether the XSD in the protocol I-D 
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.

5. Data Modeling Standards Efforts

The question was raised whether this is the right time for work
to begin on standard data modeling for NETCONF (done by the IETF).
Several organizations are currently looking at this area. There was
concern raised regarding multiple data models.  Andy says
that there were always multiple data models and NETCONF won't change
that, since standards work usually trails proprietary work.
[ed. - Some people believe that basing standards on existing practice 
is a Good Thing.]  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.  A bottom-up approach allows
agreement to be reached on basic building blocks in a reasonable
time-frame, but there is some risk of poor data organization and 
consistency across modules. 

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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