Re: [Netconf] Draft Charter Proposal for NETCONF WG

[Juergen Schoenwaelder <[e-mail]>]

On Fri, Mar 03, 2017 at 12:24:34PM +0000, t.petch wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Kent Watsen" <[e-mail]>
> Sent: Wednesday, March 01, 2017 8:14 PM
> 
> > > Kent
> > >
> > > 7 is a monster because of the XML encoding rules, not because of the
> > > revised datastore concepts.  And datastores, as you say, are more
> > > important - revising the XML encoding rules is cosmetic, not needed
> > > technically and, as I said, only make sense when the NETMOD WG has
> done
> > > its bit; and the revised charter being discussed on the NETMOD list
> > > makes no mention of this work.
> > >
> > > So scrap NETCONF XML encoding rules.
> > >
> > > Tom Petch
> >
> >
> > Hi Tom,
> >
> > Such changes fall under the "maintaining" clauses in the NETMOD
> charter:
> >
> >   a) Maintaining the data modeling language YANG.  This effort entails
> >      periodically updating the specification to address new
> requirements
> >      as they arise.
> >
> >   d) Maintaining encodings for YANG modeled data.  This effort entails
> >      updating encodings already defined by the NETMOD working group
> >      (XML and JSON) to accommodate changes to the YANG specification,
> >      and defining new encodings that are needed, and yet do not fall
> >      under the charter of any other active IETF working group.
> 
> Kent
> 
> I was going to be sarcastic but resisted the temptation:-)
> 
> I am unable to reconcile those paragraphs with
> 
> 'NETCONF XML Encoding Rules from RFC 7950 will
> be moved to RFC6241bis.'
> 
> To me, they are on different planets; one puts XML encoding rules in the
> NETCONF WG and the NETCONF RFC, the other places them in the NETMOD WG
> and the NETMOD RFC.
>

YANG today defines the language plus its data encoding rules into XML
plus NETCONF protocol details that NETCONF did not define (and the
reason is simply that YANG was done after NETCONF and nothing else).

I think the goal is to move the NETCONF protocol details that NETCONF
did not define to the NETCONF specification. Some may want to factor
out the XML encoding out of the YANG specification as well, similar to
how we have JSON as a separate document. On the hand hand this makes
sense, on the other hand it makes it a bit more difficult to write
examples down in the YANG specification (since the examples then
depend on another external specification - or one would have to create
yet another ad-hoc notation (YAAN).

Back to your question, it seems obvious to me that YANG and the XML
encoding rules naturally belong to NETMOD, the 'NETCONF protocol
details that NETCONF did not define' naturally belong to NETCONF.

/js

-- 
Juergen Schoenwaelder           Jacobs University Bremen gGmbH
Phone: [phone]         Campus Ring 1 | 28759 Bremen | Germany
Fax:   [phone]         <http://www.jacobs-university.de/>