Re: [secdir] [i2rs] Asynchronous Nature of the I2RS Protocol - vs RESTCONF and NETCONF

[Juergen Schoenwaelder <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, Mar 04, 2015 at 03:57:50PM -0800, Andy Bierman wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 4, 2015 at 3:09 PM, Juergen Schoenwaelder
> <[e-mail]> wrote:
> > On Wed, Mar 04, 2015 at 02:42:44PM -0500, Jeffrey Haas wrote:
> >>
> >> There is a presumption that it may be possible for the I2RS agent to
> >> restart.  Given that a number of I2RS operations are likely to be built
> >> using multiple interactions with the agent, it's necessary to understand
> >> what state the agent may be in with regard to last-reset.  A simple but
> >> unscalable way to implement this is to preceed each operation with a
> >> get/get-config to verify the state of the system prior to sending in the
> >> next I2RS operation.
> >>
> >
> > If this is a problem (which I am not sure), then send a get/get-config
> > before each edit operation won't buy you much since the agent can
> > still restart inbetween.
> >
> >> What is likely more stable is simply knowing whether
> >> the system is in the same state as when you last interacted with it.
> >>
> >> A version numbering system of some sort, whether system-wide or potentially
> >> as part of some models (perhaps even just I2RS models) would be sufficient
> >> to provide such a checkpoint.
> >>
> >> An example of the problem space this would address presuming three
> >> operations must be completed to accomplish a given I2RS goal, "A B C".
> >> If the agent crashes after B has been done, C may either complete with no
> >> errors, or may fail before the setup state for A and B are no longer in the
> >> system.
> >
> > The simple solution is to make "A B C" one atomic edit.
> >
> 
> 
> We use entity tags and If-Match in RESTCONF so the client can
> be sure it is editing the correct version of the resource instance.
> This works nicely for persistent configuration, especially if
> the server can reboot with the same config ETags.
> 
> If-Match will cause the edit to fail if the server reboots and the
> I2RS state is gone.
> The client will get a 412 Precondition Failed response and know it might have to
> start over.
> 
> RESTCONF only requires the server to maintain an ETag for the config root.
> Finer granularity (e.g., the parent resource has an ETag) is probably needed
> to support multiple concurrent edits.
>

Thanks, this all makes sense. So there is a viable mechanism to create
a sequence of linked edits. The main trade-off, however, between a
single atomic edit and a sequence of linked edits is who is taking the
pain to cleanup the mess if things fail in the middle. If you write a
client, you love the server to do it. If you write a server, you love
the client to do it. ;-)

/js

-- 
Juergen Schoenwaelder           Jacobs University Bremen gGmbH
Phone: [phone]         Campus Ring 1 | 28759 Bremen | Germany
Fax:   [phone]         <http://www.jacobs-university.de/>