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

[Robert Wilton <[e-mail]>]

I've also been thinking about this problem a bit more :-)

The XPath solution works, but the expression isn't particularly nice to 
write, and I suspect that implementations may struggle to implement it 
efficiently (if they support XPath filtering at all).

A nicer solution here might be to allow the XPath filters to be combined 
with a subtree filter along the lines of a more advanced type of 
"Attribute Match Expression" sec 6.2.2 of rfc6241.

E.g. rather than this XPath filter:

/te:te/te:tunnels/te:tunnel[te:name='foo'] |
/te:te/te:connections/te:connection[te:name=/te:te/te:tunnels/te:tunnel[te:name='foo']/te:connections/te:connection/te:name]

Here is example of what a subtree filter combined with an XPath filter 
could potentially look like (which of course isn't valid NETCONF/YANG 
today):

<filter type="subtree-xpath">
   <te:te xmlns:te="...">
     <te:tunnels te:name="foo"/>
     <te:connections>
       <filter type="xpath" select="te:name = ../te:tunnels/te:tunnel[te:name='foo']/te:connections/te:connection/te:name)"/>
     </te:connections>
   </te:te>
</filter>


Any opinions on whether this would be beneficial or is this just 
reinventing the wheel?

Thanks,
Rob


On 11/10/2017 10:41, t.petch wrote:
> 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
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>>> netmod mailing list
>>>>>>> [e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]>
>>>>>>> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/netmod
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Netconf mailing list
>>>>>> [e-mail] <mailto:[e-mail]>
>>>>>> https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/netconf
>>>>>>
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