Hi,

On Sat, Apr 19, 2014 at 8:22 AM, Russ White <[email protected]> wrote:

>
> > And the basic premise of I2RS is that there are requirements for the work
> > that were not addressed properly by the existing configuration protocols.
> > Otherwise the WG would not even need to discuss protocol modifications.
> > So the fact that NetConf / YANG works for device configuration does not
> > seem to be evidence that it works for what I2RS wants to do.
>
> Precisely. Otherwise, we could have just looked at the problem, and said,
> "let's use YANG." But I think we're starting to confuse the problem set
> because we started by trying to boil the ocean. Once you actually get to
> town, it's hard to keep in focus that you're just there for a new pitchfork
> handle -- that game of checkers over there on the porch of the hotel looks
> so interesting, and the hardware store has so much other stuff than just
> pitchfork handles, after all.
>
> So, given we are _supposed_ to be focused on the RIB interface, and not
> protocol, configuration, device, etc., etc., what specific points have the
> use cases brought out that either NETCONF/YANG or FORCES not fulfill? One
> of
> the primary points was timing -- are these other systems fast enough?
>
> >From my perspective, these two systems don't fulfill the I2RS mandate on
> the
> RIB side for various reasons:
>
> - I'm not convinced on the speed side. YANG feels a bit heavy weigh for
> what
> we want here. The flexibility is there, but so is the cost of that
> flexibility.
>


Can you explain how an off-line representation of the data model can be
fast or slow?
You mean the YANG compiler takes too long to process a YANG file?
You mean the unspecified I2RS protocol will be too slow on the wire if
it uses XML or JSON encoding of YANG data structures?



>
> - I'm not convinced YANG has handled the atomicity issues in a way that
> makes sense for the application environment we have in mind. RESTCONF seems
> to go that direction, but I'm not certain it's a complete solution (?).
>
>
YANG is a data modeling language.
RESTCONF is a protocol.
Atomicity is a property of the protocol.
Which YANG statements prevent this from being accomplished in the TBD I2RS
protocol?



> So, IMHO, I think we need to either consider FORCES, or "something new."
> But
> we're going to have a hard time determining if this is true if we can't
> make
> a solid requirements list. For me, these are:
>
> - Atomic operations at the RIB level
> - Speed that's comparable to a local routing process installing routes in
> the RIB
> - An immediate feedback system within the RESTful mold that tells the
> installing process what happened, and why, with the route it just tried to
> install in the RIB
>
> So, it seems to me that we need to return to the use cases -- there are two
> in the charter. If we want to discuss adding others, that's fine, but we
> need to gain some focus, and stop trying to boil the ocean, if we want to
> make any progress.
>
>
It seems to me this WG needs to start asking the right questions about the
data modeling language requirements.  E.g.:

  - What are the data types needed?  Is this a static set of will it ever
change?
  - What are the high level data modeling constructs needed?
  - Are user defined types needed?
  - Are re-usable data definitions needed?
  - Does the data model need to be modular?  How does it grow over time?
  - Can vendors add data definitions that extend the standard definitions?
  - How are new definitions added in a way that does not break existing
clients?
  - How is mandatory to implement vs. optional to implement functionality
handled?
  - How is mandatory to use vs. optional to use functionality handled?

You are asking about protocol requirements, not data modeling.
IMO it would be near-sighted and extremely impractical to choose
a language that only supported description on RIB info.  I fail to see what
is so special about RIB info that would warrant its own DML.


:-)
>
> Russ
>

Andy
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