[netmod] Instance-data-format - shall we define etag and last-modified annotation ?

[Balázs Lengyel <[e-mail]>]

Hello,

Restconf (rfc8040) defined to useful bits of metadata about a YANG defined
datastore: entity-tag and the last-modified timestamp.

These can be very useful in instance data sets, however Restconf defines an
encoding for these (as part of the http headers) that can not be used in
instance-data-sets.

draft-ietf-netmod-yang-instance-file-format-03#section-7.2
<https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-netmod-yang-instance-file-format-03#
section-7.2>     defines metadata annotations for these two, that can be
used in instance data

  md:annotation entity-tag {
      type string;
      description "Used to encode the entity-tag …";
    }
    md:annotation last-modified {
      type yang:date-and-time;
      description "Contains the date and time when the annotated
        instance was last modified (or created).";
    }

In order to be able to include this data, the annotations need to be defined
in some YANG module.

 

The question has been raised whether 

1.	these annotations should be defined in the ietf-yang-instance-data
module as it needs them, as that is open or
2.	the annotations should be defined in another draft in a separate
YANG module as any other annotation

The first option is better because the instance-data needs these
annotations, and at this point we see no other user for the annotation, and
in this case the ongoing instance data draft will define it

The second option is better because, if later there are other users for
these annotations, it might be strange to reference the
ietf-yang-instance-data module. Also why provide special treatment to these
2 annotations?

 

The authors support option 1 and don’t have the time to start a new draft to
define these annotations.

On IETF105 in the room there was more support for option 1. 

 

Please indicate if you have an opinion about the choice of 1 or 2

 

Regards Balazs