Re: [netmod] Inventory YANG model (entity-MIB)

[Jeffrey Haas <[e-mail]>]

[speaking largely as a contributor and not i2rs-chair]

On Fri, Mar 06, 2015 at 12:05:36PM +0100, Juergen Schoenwaelder wrote:
> My first question is (perhaps not surprising) whether inventory falls
> into the I2RS charter, I2RS = interface to the routing system. That
> said, RFC 6643 gives you a read-only translation. There are not many
> read-write objects in the ENTITY-MIB so perhaps this is good enough
> for now. I guess it would help what I2RS needs to know in order to
> make the interface to the routing system work.

As discussed later in thread, having this work owned by netmod is fine with
I2RS.

The structure of the generic topology draft is leading to interesting
questions about how information present in that model can link to higher and
lower layers.  As seen in the I2RS presentations at the most recent interim,
this eventually leads to questions like "inventory".  I also raised the
question about tunnels which will lead to other models as well.

The fact that the IETF already has good models for some of these things, the
ENTITY-MIB as an example, is good.  However, simple conversion of MIBs to
yang modules are likely to result in models that are good MIB replacements,
but might not be well tailored to re-use elsewhere.  Since much of the
motivation is for re-use, re-use is the discussion I would suggest is most
important.

As an example, SNMP tables probably should be converted into yang groupings.
There's also the matter of indexing of such conversions may not be fully
appropriate for such re-use and alternate indexes may be helpful.

> PS: I personally would have preferred if generic topology and perhaps
>     inventory would have split off into a short-lived targeted WG
>     instead of doing all of this in I2RS but it seems leadership has
>     already decided that I2RS is the home for all of this.

[speaking as one of the i2rs-chairs]

Topology was one of the use cases that was in-charter and we're not looking
to significantly expand our charter work.  But one thing we've noted over
the life of the group is that there has been a lot of push for micro-WG to
be formed for various yang efforts.  I personally believe we're better off
with some owning WG taking on the task but handling it within the context of
a design team.  The overhead of a full WG is likely not merited.

Which WG the design team reports to is, of course, up for discussion.

-- Jeff