Re: [netmod] validating a YANG action

Juergen Schoenwaelder <j.schoenwaelder@jacobs-university.de> Fri, 03 May 2019 09:20 UTC

Date: Fri, 03 May 2019 11:20:12 +0200
From: Juergen Schoenwaelder <j.schoenwaelder@jacobs-university.de>
To: Andy Bierman <andy@yumaworks.com>
CC: NetMod WG <netmod@ietf.org>
Message-ID: <20190503092012.gb2zzqggb2igzs37@anna.jacobs.jacobs-university.de>
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Subject: Re: [netmod] validating a YANG action
Precedence: list

On Fri, May 03, 2019 at 01:10:58AM -0700, Andy Bierman wrote:
> On Thu, May 2, 2019 at 10:57 PM Juergen Schoenwaelder <
> j.schoenwaelder@jacobs-university.de> wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, May 02, 2019 at 04:15:28PM -0700, Andy Bierman wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > The text about invoking actions in RFC 7950, sec. 7.15 is not clear
> > > about whether the ancestor data nodes have to exist.
> > >
> > > sec 7.15.2, para 2:
> > >
> > >    The <action> element contains a hierarchy of nodes that identifies
> > > the node in the datastore.
> > >
> > >
> > > The RFC does not say anything about if the data node is required to
> > > exist or not.  There is no distinction between NP-container, P-container,
> > > or list which are ancestors of the action node. It does not specify
> > > which datastore, and that is not supplied in the <action> RPC.
> > > The text specifies what must be in the <rpc> request, not in any
> > datastore
> > > or state data.
> > >
> > > It seems like the intent is that no instance test is specified at all and
> > > the corresponding ancestor nodes to the action node do not have to
> > > exist for the action to be invoked. (The action may succeed or fail).
> > > The issue is whether there is an existence-test before invoking the
> > action.
> >
> > We discussed actions during the work on NMDA. RFC 8342 has this text
> > in section 6, in particular 6.1 says:
> >
> >    Actions are always invoked in the context of the operational state
> >    datastore.  The node for which the action is invoked MUST exist in
> >    the operational state datastore.
> >
> >
> This only applies to a server implementing NMDA.
> There is no requirement for a server implementing RFC 7950 to make this
> test.
>

Yes, the behavior is unspecified in RFC 7950. However, note that RFC
8342 formally updates RFC 7950 and the Introduction section says:

   This document updates RFC 7950 by refining the definition of the
   accessible tree for some XML Path Language (XPath) context (see
   Section 6.1) and the invocation context of operations (see
   Section 6.2).

This update may not affect your implementation but since you asked
whether there is an existence-test before invoking the action, I
thought a pointer to RFC 8342 is perhaps relevant.

/js

-- 
Juergen Schoenwaelder           Jacobs University Bremen gGmbH
Phone: +49 421 200 3587         Campus Ring 1 | 28759 Bremen | Germany
Fax:   +49 421 200 3103         <https://www.jacobs-university.de/>

[netmod] validating a YANG action Andy Bierman
Re: [netmod] validating a YANG action Juergen Schoenwaelder
Re: [netmod] validating a YANG action Andy Bierman
Re: [netmod] validating a YANG action Juergen Schoenwaelder
Re: [netmod] validating a YANG action Andy Bierman
Re: [netmod] validating a YANG action Juergen Schoenwaelder
Re: [netmod] validating a YANG action Andy Bierman