Re: [VCARDDAV] Comments on draft-salgueiro-vcarddav-kind-device-01

[Gonzalo Salgueiro <[e-mail]>]

On Apr 10, 2012, at 10:50 AM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:

> On 4/5/12 11:18 PM, Joe Marcus Clarke wrote:
>> On 4/5/12 5:02 PM, Peter Saint-Andre wrote:
>> 
>> [Re-adding vcarddav to respond to Simon's comments on
>> draft-salgueiro-vcarddav-kind-device-01.]
> 
> Well, he sent them off-list, so I hope he didn't mind your posting them
> to the public list. :)

My apologies Simon.

I'll take responsibility for that. Joe asked me if ti would be OK and after reading Simon's comments they made lots of sense and were in line with our thinking and with prior comments received.
> 
>>>> - On page 4 a new feature is introduced: properties can apply to the
>>>> device itself, an organization, or a person. The TYPE parameter is
>>>> overloaded to be able to distinguish this implicitly. When there is no
>>>> TYPE we can't tell. This seems very fragile to me. It looks like an
>>>> interoperability trap.
>>>>  - Is it really necessary to be able to distinguish what is a
>>>> property's subject? What is the use case?
>>>>  - Would it be possible to do it explicitly, without overloading TYPE?
>>>>  - Maybe use multiple vCards per device and link them together with a
>>>> RELATED property? Maybe create a new type of RELATED for this purpose?
>> 
>> This is an interesting idea.  The more I thought about and talked it
>> over with Gonzalo, the more I thought this might be the way to go.  Take
>> a server chassis, for example.  That bare-metal server could have its
>> own KIND:device vCard.  That server may run a hypervisor.  That
>> hypervisor could have its own KIND:application vCard.  Given that model,
>> I could see adding related admin vCards as well.
> 
> Yes, that makes sense to me -- limit the device KIND to just the
> physical machine.

Agreed. We'll make this change.
> 
>>>> - The "serial number as UID" thing has been discussed on the mailing
>>>> list. I'll reiterate my view on this:
>>>>  - It's fine to use a serial number as a UID.
>>>>  - However you can't rely on a KIND:device vCard as having a serial
>>>> number as its UID.
>>>> Using the serial number as UID makes me a little bit uneasy because I
>>>> don't want people implementing this based on the example (as people do
>>>> too often) and thinking that UID = serial. I would suggest to do one of
>>>> two things:
>>>>  a) don't say the UID is a serial number, or
>>>>  b) create a new property for serial numbers.
>> 
>> We got this note before and were going to make a change to the draft to
>> indicate that a serial number property could be used similar to MAC
>> address.  We'd leave UID as it is with its original intention.
> 
> +1.

This lines up with a comment received on the list already. We'll plan to release the next version of the draft in the next few days.

Thanks for the feedback.

Gonzalo

> 
> Peter
> 
> -- 
> Peter Saint-Andre
> https://stpeter.im/
> 
>