Re: [netmod] AD review of draft-ietf-netmod-system-mgmt

[Juergen Schoenwaelder <[e-mail]>]

On Tue, Dec 10, 2013 at 01:23:30PM +0100, Martin Bjorklund wrote:
> Randy Presuhn <[e-mail]> wrote:
> > Hi -
> > 
> > >From: Benoit Claise <[e-mail]>
> > >
> > >            is mapped to sysLocation. sysLocation is defined as a
> > >            DisplayString [RFC2579]
> > >            which uses a 7-bit ASCII character set. An implementation that
> > >            performs this
> > >            mapping MUST restrict the allowed values for "location" to match
> > >            the
> > >            restrictions of sysLocation.";
> > 
> > I understand why folks might do this, but it still gives
> > me heartburn.  I believe it was a mistake when we failed
> > to extend the syntax of these MIB objects to permit
> > Unicode, and I believe it's a mistake to perpetuate the
> > limitation here. I recognize that this is a messy problem,
> > but surely we can do better than this, even if it's as
> > simple a hack as having "location" and "legacy-location".
> 
> I don't think it makes much sense to have two such similar objects in
> this data model.
> 
> One option would be to simply remove the connection between
> sysLocation and this new location leaf (and same for contact),
> essentially making the snmp object the "legacy" object.

Another option is to turn the logic around. That is, if there is a
non-ASCII character in the YANG object, the mapping to the
corresponding MIB object must take precautions to comply with the MIB
restrictions (e.g., representing the non-ASCII character using \u and
\U escape sequences). The mapping to the MIB object would also have to
do proper truncations. The details of the mapping I assume would be
implementation specific.

This approach allows us to move to a unicode-based world rather than
carrying old ASCII restrictions forward endlessly (which is what I
think Randy is concerned about).

/js

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