Re: [netconf] restconf collections

[Kent Watsen <[e-mail]>]

> On Oct 1, 2020, at 9:23 AM, Martin Björklund <[e-mail]> wrote:
> 
> Kent Watsen <[e-mail]> wrote:
>> Hi Qin,
>> 
>>> Some opstate must be persisted, e.g., long-lived counters, logs, etc.,
>>> but it’s a good point about other opstate not being persisted.
>>> Perhaps “node-tags” can be used here, to differentiate which is
>>> which…and servers can indicate if/how they support the ephemeral
>>> opstate leafs in queries?
>>> 
>>> [Qin]:That's a good case for node tag, in earlier discussion, we
>>> discussed operation type, which distinguishs cumulative statistics
>>> value from current value. The case discussed here is very close to
>>> operation type proposal discussed earlier.
>> 
>> Yes.  Thank you for pointing that out.  I meant to make the same
>> observation before.  Indeed, such node-tags could have dual-purpose:
>> to guide a streaming-strategy and a querying-strategy for certain
>> nodes.
>> 
>> 
>>> Note sure how others feel about “direction: (c), but my primary
>>> use-case revolves around time-series data (e.g., logs), where the
>>> interest is commonly on the most-recent entries, so
>>> "reverse-->offset—>limit” works nicely.
>>> 
>>> Perhaps an alternative would be to lift a concept from Python with
>>> negative indexes so, for instance, offset=-N and limit=-N gives the
>>> last N entries?
>>> [Qin]: Yes, that's what I thought as well, with negative indexes, (b)
>>> and (c) seems to me, can be combined.
>> 
>> Can others comment on this?
> 
> Isn't this just another syntax for the same function?

No, it is not.

K.


> 
> /martin
> 
> 
>> Presumably, we could eliminate “direction” (c) with this approach.  
>> 
>> Without “direction”, I think that UIs can still support the ability to
>> do column-sorts, whereby the user clicks on a column’s header to
>> toggle ascending vs. descending presentation, but they’ll have to do
>> it client-side.
>> 
>> That is, if wanting to see the 2nd page of results sorted by a column,
>> something like:
>> 
>> 	sort(column-name) --> offset(-2*pagesize) --> limit(pagesize)
>> 
>> Followed by the client then flipping the results to present the
>> results in the user-selected order, right?
>> 
>> That said, given that DB-backends that support sorts commonly also
>> support direction, it's unclear what this buys us.
>> 
>> 
>>>>> Sure, but I wonder if, e.g., a netmask filter, is supportable by 
>>>>> common DB-backends.  I’m hoping we have some DB-experts on the list!
>>>> 
>>>> See above.  It can be quite efficient even if the backend doesn't 
>>>> support it.
>>> 
>>> I don’t see that above, but I don’t doubt that it can be so, it’s just
>>> a whole lot of implementation complexity.  It seems that we
>>> should/must support servers doing it, we just need to find a way
>>> (node-tags?) to enable them to express that ability.
>>> [Qin]: My feeling is this efficiency more depends on the amount of
>>> data we need to request. If amount of data we request is huge, maybe,
>>> client-> server-> backend may be the better choice.
>> 
>> Is it the amount of data requested or the number of entries in the
>> list?  At least, in my worldview, clients are always requesting a
>> “page” of data, so that part is rather consistently small.
>> 
>> If the intention is to get a complete dump, then maybe the comment
>> from yesterday applies, whereby streaming to an external repository
>> that can be queried offline makes more sense?  - especially
>> considering that the number of on-box logs is likely to be only the
>> most recent (e.g., days), whereas the complete-dump type queries
>> likely wish to extend well-past that.
>> 
>> K.
>> 
>>