Re: [netmod] [Netconf] Retrieving Information Pointed by leafref

["t.petch" <[e-mail]>]

Igor

Thinking laterally, this is a problem that DNS encountered a few decades
ago and solved, by allowing the server to include additional information
not specifically requested that the server can see is going to be needed
for the next step, so if the client asks only about a CNAME, then the
server can provide the relevant IP address as well.

I suspect that the current rules for Netconf do not allow the server to
send anything not explicitly requested, which is a shame (IMO).

The DNS approach works very well, in fact I do not think we would
survive without it.

Tom Petch

----- Original Message -----
From: "Igor Bryskin" <[e-mail]>
Sent: Tuesday, October 10, 2017 2:35 PM

Hi Rob,

This helps a lot. What you wrote will work.

The only difference is that if we would have the "joimt with" clause as
we proposed, the server would be able to tailor the te-tunnel
presentation to the client's requirements, e.g. substituting the
connection pointers with connection bodies, while, according to your
suggestion, the server will provide the te-tunnel body as is, and then
augment it with the cobbection information, thus, leaving
for the client to "shuffle " the received data. But I do agree, this
would be a minor inconvinience for the client, the important thing is
that the client will get all the data in one piece.

Thanks a lot,
Igor

c

From:Robert Wilton
To:Igor Bryskin,
Cc:Per Hedeland,[e-mail],[e-mail],
Date:2017-10-10 06:41:04
Subject:Re: [netmod] [Netconf] Retrieving Information Pointed by leafref

Hi Igor,

On 09/10/2017 23:11, Igor Bryskin wrote:
> Hi Per,
>
> This is a good news, but, please, help us out.
> Consider, we have a node - "te-tunnel" - which among other attributes
has two key leafref lists:
> 1) each member of the 1st list points to a "connection" supporting the
te-tunnel. All connections supporting all te-tunnels are stored in a
single list of connections.
> 2) each member of the 2nd list points to a supporting "te-tunnel" -
the te-tunnel in question depends on. All te=tunnels including the
te-tunnel in question, are stored in a single list of te-tunnels.
>
> The question: how the client can retrieve via a single request all
attributes of the te-tunnel in question along with all parameters of all
connections supporting the te-tunnel, but with just pointers to
supporting te-tunnels (so that the interested client can use the
pointers to retrieve full data via subsequent separate requests) ?
I think that it might be something like this (for tunnel name foo):

   /te/tunnels/tunnel[name='foo'] |

/te/connections/connection[name=/te/tunnels/tunnel[name='foo']/connectio
ns/connection/name]

E.g. in English, this should equate to something like:

Return all information for tunnel foo AND ALSO
Return all information for all connections where the connection name
matches one of the connections listed in tunnel foo.

>
> Likewise, how the client can ask for full data of the te-tunnel and
all supporting te-tunnels and just pointers for supporting connections?
If my xpath above is right, then this would be something roughly like
this:

   /te/tunnels/tunnel[name='foo'] |

/te/tunnels/tunnel[name=/te/tunnels/tunnel[name='foo']/supporting-tunnel
s/supporting-tunnel/name]


I'm an XPath novice, so the expressions might be wrong.

https://www.freeformatter.com/xpath-tester.html might be useful. E.g. if
you can construct a simple XML instance tree of your data, you could
validate whether the XPath expression works.

I hope that this is of some help,
Rob


>
> I really appreciate your help,
>
> Igor
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Per Hedeland [mailto:[e-mail]]
> Sent: Monday, October 09, 2017 5:21 PM
> To: Igor Bryskin
> Cc: [e-mail]; [e-mail]; [e-mail];
[e-mail]
> Subject: Re: [Netconf] [netmod] Retrieving Information Pointed by
leafref
>
> Just to be clear: what we're suggesting is that you can use the
> already-existing standard NETCONF XPath capability to achieve the
desired
> result - see https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6241#section-8.9
>
> --Per
>
> On 2017-10-09 21:52, Igor Bryskin wrote:
>> I agree. For example, a leafref may point not to a singls entity, but
to a list of entities, and the client might want to expand all of them
into the joint get response.
>>
>> Igor
>>
>> *From:*Per Hedeland
>> *To:*Martin Bjorklund,
>> *Cc:*Igor
Bryskin,[e-mail],[e-mail],[e-mail],
>> *Date:*2017-10-09 15:12:22
>> *Subject:*Re: [Netconf] [netmod] Retrieving Information Pointed by
leafref
>>
>> On 2017-10-09 19:13, Martin Bjorklund wrote:
>>> Igor Bryskin <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>>> Hi Per,
>>>>
>>>> Basically, what we need is a way for a client to request something
>>>> like this:
>>>>
>>>> get <XPath> joint with <XPath1, XPath2, ..., XPathn>
>>> ... which is what Per's expression does!  Note that "|" in XPath
means
>>> "union".
>>>
>>> But as Per explained, it only works in some cases (when the leafref
>>> acts a "single pointer").
>> Well, that particular expression works only in that case - but since
it
>> is effectively the client that (perhaps based on the data model)
decides
>> what the leafref-leafs "mean" (in this case the single key of a
single
>> list), other cases can be handled the same way. E.g. multiple
>> leafref-to-key leafs that together give the keys of a multi-key list
>> just amounts to a slightly hairier XPath filter...
>>
>> --Per
>>
>>>> with a server interpreting the request as follows:
>>>> if a node pointed by XPath contains a pointer (e.g. key leafref)
>>>> matching one of the XPath from the "joint with" list, then the
server
>>>> must provide the entire body of the node pointed by the pointer,
>>>> otherwise, just the pointer (as it happens today, that is, when no
>>>> "joint with" list specified).
>>>>
>>>> We think that this would allow for the client to optimize the
number
>>>> of request-response iterations depending on application/use case.
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>> Igor
>>>
>>>
>>> /martin
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: Per Hedeland [mailto:[e-mail]]
>>>> Sent: Monday, October 09, 2017 12:06 PM
>>>> To: Xufeng Liu
>>>> Cc: Igor Bryskin; [e-mail]; [e-mail]
>>>> Subject: Re: [Netconf] [netmod] Retrieving Information Pointed by
>>>> leafref
>>>>
>>>> I understand your use case, but a leaf of type leafref does not in
>>>> general identify a single node in the data tree - the leafref path
>>>> could
>>>> be for a non-key leaf, and/or the path could traverse list nodes,
>>>> and/or
>>>> the "target" list could have multiple keys and thus multiple
>>>> leafref-leafs be required to identify a specific list entry.
>>>>
>>>> Thus it seems to me that your use case is not a reasonable basis
for a
>>>> new protocol operation. My XPath foo isn't very good either, but I
do
>>>> believe Robert's suggestion of using an XPath filter could be a way
>>>> forward. I *think* the filter expression would be something along
the
>>>> lines of
>>>>
>>>>    /te/tunnels/tunnel[name='foo'] |
>>>>
/te/explicit-paths/explicit-path[name=/te/tunnels/tunnel[name='foo']/pat
hs/path/explicit-path]
>>>>
>>>> --Per
>>>>
>>>> On 2017-10-09 15:42, Xufeng Liu wrote:
>>>>> Hi Per,
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> *From:* Igor Bryskin [mailto:[e-mail]]
>>>>> *Sent:* Sunday, October 8, 2017 7:04 PM
>>>>> *To:* Igor Bryskin <[e-mail]>; [e-mail];
>>>>> *[e-mail]
>>>>> *Cc:* [e-mail]; [e-mail]
>>>>> *Subject:* Re: [Netconf] [netmod] Retrieving Information Pointed
by
>>>>> *leafref
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Hi Joel,
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks, I think I didnt explain our problem correctly.
>>>>>
>>>>> In our case we have a leafref pointing to a te tunnel name, which
>>>>> happens to be a key to lookup the (axilary) tunnel.  We need a way
to
>>>>> include the entire tunnel body (not just a name) into the get
>>>>> response. This is to optimize the number of iterations between the
>>>>> client and the server. As Xufeng put it something similar to SQL
join,
>>>>>
>>>>> Igor
>>>>>
>>>>> *From:*Igor Bryskin
>>>>>
>>>>> *To:*[e-mail],[e-mail],
>>>>>
>>>>> *Cc:*[e-mail],[e-mail],
>>>>>
>>>>> *Date:*2017-10-08 17:36:47
>>>>>
>>>>> *Subject:*Re: [Netconf] [netmod] Retrieving Information Pointed by
>>>>> *leafref
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Hi Per,
>>>>>
>>>>> In a nutshell we would lika for a netconf client to have a way to
>>>>> instruct the server on whether in response to the get request the
>>>>> server needs to provide the entire body of a datastore node
pointed
>>>>> to by a leafref or just a pointer to said node, so that the node's
>>>>> body could be retrieved by a subsequent separate request. This is
>>>>> requested by implementors who want to optimise rhe number of
>>>>> interactions between a client and its server.
>>>>>
>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>> Igor
>>>>>
>>>>> *From:*Per Hedeland
>>>>>
>>>>> *To:*Xufeng Liu,
>>>>>
>>>>> *Cc:*[e-mail],'NetMod WG',
>>>>>
>>>>> *Date:*2017-10-08 14:01:27
>>>>>
>>>>> *Subject:*Re: [Netconf] [netmod] Retrieving Information Pointed by
>>>>> *leafref
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 2017-10-06 23:11, Xufeng Liu wrote:
>>>>>> During the design team discussion for TE and MPLS YANG modeling,
we
>>>>>> have received a request from implementers: How to minimize the
number
>>>>>> of NETCONF/RESTCONF RPCs to improve operation efficiency?
>>>>>> Especially for the case when the operator or client software
needs to
>>>>>> retrieve the object contents pointed by a leafref.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> For example, given the following simplified TE tunnel model,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> +--rw te
>>>>>>
>>>>>>        +--rw explicit-paths
>>>>>>
>>>>>>        |  +--rw explicit-path* [name]
>>>>>>
>>>>>>        |     +--rw name                      string
>>>>>>
>>>>>>        |        +--rw explicit-route-object* [index]
>>>>>>
>>>>>>        |           +--rw index                   uint32
>>>>>>
>>>>>>        |           +--rw explicit-route-usage?   identityref
>>>>>>
>>>>>>        +--rw tunnels
>>>>>>
>>>>>>        |  +--rw tunnel* [name]
>>>>>>
>>>>>>        |  |  +--rw name                   string
>>>>>>
>>>>>>        |  |  +--rw paths
>>>>>>
>>>>>>        |  |  |  +--rw path* [name]
>>>>>>
>>>>>> |  |  |     +--rw explicit-path?  ->
>>>>>> |  |  |     ../../../../../explicit-paths/explicit-path/name
>>>>>>
>>>>>> when the client tries to retrieve a tunnels information based on
the
>>>>>> tunnel name, the get operation returns a list of leafrefs
pointing
>>>>>> to the paths of the tunnel.
>>>>> Sorry, I'm afraid I don't follow. Can you explain exactly what
your
>>>>> "get" request is (protocol and payload), and where the "list of
>>>>> leafref's" (whatever that may be) occurs in the reply?
>>>>>
>>>>> */[Xufeng] The get operation is the NETCONF/RESTCON <get>
protocol
>>>>> *operation, or the <get-data> operation described in
>>>>> *https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-dsdt-nmda-netconf-01 and the
GET
>>>>> *operations
>>>>> on {+restconf}/ds/<datastore> described in
>>>>> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-netconf-nmda-restconf-00./*
>>>>>
>>>>> */ /*
>>>>>
>>>>> */We have a list of leafref values because in this example model,
each
>>>>> *tunnel contains a list of paths, each of them contains a leafref.
The
>>>>> *get returns a value for each instance of such a leafref,
>>>>> which (as a string value) will be used as a constraint (foreign
key)
>>>>> to retrieve the instance of an explicit-path in the model above./*
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> JFYI, in case there is some fundamental misunderstanding here: a
leaf
>>>>> of
>>>>> type leafref has a single value - *one* of those that satisfy the
>>>>> leafref
>>>>> constraint, in case there are multiple "candidates".
>>>>>
>>>>> --Per
>>>>>
>>>>>> The client needs to issue at
>>>>>> least one more get operation to retrieve the path information
about
>>>>>> the given tunnel. The request is to combine these two operations
into
>>>>>> one.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> In the RDBMS SQL world, join can be used when SQL select is
>>>>>> performed, but NETCONF/YANG currently does not have this
capability.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Wed like to ask whether such a request is considered reasonable.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> If the request is reasonable, the next question is how to
>>>>>> proceed. This seems to be a protocol issue rather than YANG
modeling
>>>>>> issue. Is it acceptable to add a new operation to achieve such a
>>>>>> <get-data> operation with expanded leafrefs?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Comments and suggestions are appreciated.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> - Xufeng
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>>> [e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]>
>>>>>> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/netmod
>>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>>
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