Subject: Re: [Netconf] DISCUSS and COMMENT: <draft-ietf-netconf-with-defaults-12.txt>

From: Andy Bierman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2010 11:01:35 -0700

Hi,

1)  The WG could not force some vendors to rewrite defaults using the
    implementation choices of other vendors.  There is no 'best'
    defaults handling mode.  There was an attempt to force all vendors
    to choose an arbitrary mode but this was not successful.

2) This is already fixed.  See previous comments.  The phrase "If the 'foo'
   basic mode is used" will be added to each sentence to make it clear 
   the requirement only applies if the particular basic mode is used.

3) This is a capability extension.  It does not update or change 4741bis
   compliance.  I do not see any problem with sec. 4.3, but I can remove
   this section.  A server that implements this capability is required
   to process defaults according to the spec.  Since NETCONF places
   no requirements on the content layer, any server not implementing
   this capability is allowed to process defaults any way they want.
   There is no attempt to change the conformance of a NETCONF server
   that does not implement this capability.

Andy

-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Sparks [mailto:[email-masked]] 
Sent: Wednesday, October 27, 2010 10:48 AM
To: [email-masked]
Cc: [email-masked]; [email-masked]
Subject: DISCUSS and COMMENT: <draft-ietf-netconf-with-defaults-12.txt>

Discuss:
1) Building on Alexey's discuss - as written, this document requires any
client that cares about how defaults are handled to implement all three
(four?) modes. It would help to explicitly call that out in the text.  Did the 
group consider making one of the modes mandatory to implement at the 
server (for instance, making the SHOULD in the third bullet of 4.1 a MUST)?
If so, could the reasons for not doing so be better captured in the document? 

2) The phrasing of 2.1.2, 2.2.2, and 2.3.2 is ambiguous. During a conversation
with Dan, I was convinced that the intent was to make them subordinate to
the requirement at the top of section 2 that a server must pick one of the
three basic modes, and that 2.1.2 should be read as

"If the server supports the 'report-all' mode for handling default data,
and the client has requested it by specifying 'report-all' when using
<with-defaults>, then the server MUST behave as specified in section 3.1"

and not as

"The server MUST support the 'report-all' mode.

If that's correct, please adjust the text to make it less likely that
someone will misinterpret the requirement. (I thought 2.1.2 and the
third bullet of 4.1 were in conflict before the conversation with
Dan mentioned above).

3) Section 4.3 as written is updating the base NETCONF spec. Was the intent is
to add a requirement to the base protocol, affecting conformance of existing
implementations, or only to promote adoption of this extension? If the former,
the document needs an "Updates" header. If the latter, please remove or rephrase
this section.

Comment:
There is a bug in 2.2.2 - it points to 3.1 instead of 3.2