NETCONF session at IETF 68

This is my report from the meeting of the NETCONF working group during the IETF 68 meeting in Prague.

The meeting took place on 19 March 2007 (Jabber log).

The basic NETCONF documents are available as RFCs since December 2006:

• R. Enns: NETCONF Configuration Protocol. RFC 4741
• M. Wasserman & T. Goddard: Using the NETCONF Configuration Protocol over Secure SHell (SSH). RFC 4742
• T. Goddard: Using NETCONF over the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). RFC 4743
• E. Lear & K. Crozier: Using the NETCONF Protocol over the Blocks Extensible Exchange Protocol (BEEP). RFC 4744

The session agenda focused on the only pending Internet draft NETCONF Event Notifications. From my viewpoint it was positive that all issues that were discussed were finally resolved with simplicity being the priority. One moral is also valid for our work: XML namespace URIs are by definition unique strings that shoudn't be parsed or anyhow related to each other. No consensus was found for using either lowerCamelCase or words-with-dashes in namespace URIs.

There seems to be quite a strong push towards standardizing one XML schema language for defining NETCONF data model. While the tentative official stance is W3C XML Schema (XSD), RELAX NG gains more and more ground since it is simpler, generally easier to read, has the Backus-Naur-like compact notation and its specifications are also much easier to understand. To facilitate a comparison, Hideki Okita wrote an example schema for diffserv subsystem configuration in XSD and I wrote an equivalent schema in RELAX NG. While I am certainly a RELAX NG fan, I think the best way for the time being is to allow both schema languages. Let's see how this discussion will evolve.