Re: [netmod] xpath expressions in JSON

[Martin Bjorklund <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

Going back to the most urgent issue, what is this WG's recommendation
for the subscribed-notifications draft in NETCONF wrt/ their usage of
yang:xpath1.0 in filters?

To summarize:

We already have

  o  instance-identifier in XML uses prefixes from the XML document
  o  instance-identifier in JSON uses module names as prefixes
  o  XPath in NETCONF filter uses prefixes from the XML document
  o  XPath in JSON query filter uses module names as prefixes


Alternative A:
--------------

Use different encodings for "stream-xpath-filter" as well, depending
on if it is XML or JSON.

We would do in SN:

    o  If the node is encoded in XML, the set of namespace
       declarations are those in scope on the
       'stream-xpath-filter' leaf element.

    o  If the node is encoded in JSON, the set of namespace
       declarations is the set of prefix and namespace pairs
       for all supported YANG modules, where the prefix is
       the YANG module name and the namespace is as defined
       by the "namespace" statement in the YANG module.

Pro: the format is consistent within each encoding.

Con: unclear how to handle other encodings.
Con: we keep using context-depending encodings.

We could probably add that CBOR uses the same representation as JSON.

Example in XML:

  <stream-xpath-filter
      xmlns:if="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-interfaces"
      xmlns:ip="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-ip">
    /if:interfaces/if:interface/ip:ipv4
  </stream-xpath-filter>

Example in JSON:

  "stream-xpath-filter":
    "/ietf-interfaces:interfaces/ietf-interfaces:interface/ietf-ip:ipv4"



Alternative B:
--------------

Use a non-context depending encoding, with the module name as prefix.

We would do in SN:

    o  The set of namespace
       declarations is the set of prefix and namespace pairs
       for all supported YANG modules, where the prefix is
       the YANG module name and the namespace is as defined
       by the "namespace" statement in the YANG module.

Pro: the format is independent from the protocol encoding

Con: in XML, this leaf is treated differently from other XPath
     expressions, such as get-config filter and nacm rules.

Example in XML:

  <stream-xpath-filter>
    /ietf-interfaces:interfaces/ietf-interfaces:interface/ietf-ip:ipv4
  </stream-xpath-filter>

Example in JSON:

  "stream-xpath-filter":
    "/ietf-interfaces:interfaces/ietf-interfaces:interface/ietf-ip:ipv4"


My proposal is A.  I think it is more important with consistency
within each encoding than across encodings.

(This said, I would like to have a context-independent encoding of all
YANG types in the future.  But not now.)




/martin