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XML is a new bottle (syntax) waiting for wine (semantic) to be filled in. Historically, we have TL1 (text string based), CMIP (ASN.1 object-oriented), SNMP (ASN.1 table-oriented), CORBA (IDL object-oriented), CLI (text string based), syslog (text string based). TL1, CLI, syslog see more operation deployment than other mechanisms.
In the real life, network management model standard is always lagging behind the network protocol standard. It is just a nature process of standard development. While the standard is being developed, vendors will implement the pre-standard protocol and mitigate into standard protocol later. Service providers will purchase pre-standard equipment with promise of software upgrade to standard protocol, which almost every vendor honors that promise later on.
However, it is a totally different story about the implementation of network management model. Vendors will carve out whatever temporary suitable network management tool, be it CLI, syslog, TL1, craft interface to placate the service providers. Why vendor do that? Because first vendor sold to a service provider has a tendency to lock that service provider into his equipment. Service providers will buy into to an early bird vendor regardless his network management capability because initial deployment only involves very few boxes. Hey, nobody has long term vision nowadays, not just service providers. As the deployment grows, a more capable network management tool is a must. Now incumbent vendor will ask for outrage price for a standard compliance network management tool. So service providers decline this kind of offer and try to survival the growth of service by patching up the systems. And then low cost, reliable, profitable service got throw out of the window.
It is more of a business problem than a technical problem in the network management domain. However, track record show a flexible framework helps, for example, CLI, syslog, TL1, etc. A rigid framework tends to stall, for example, CMIP, SNMP, CORBA. The advantage of XML is that it is more or so like CLI/syslog/TLI, yet could be more structure than all of them. If we are not careful of controlling XML proliferation, the structural advantage of XML will disappear quickly as mentioned in the Bert's first email. And I think that David Durham's email point out what we can do to make XML works: "This group should focus on determining which XML schema definition language IETF wgs will use, define the basic reusable data types useful across IETF wgs, define the operational model for XML transactions, and select a common transport. Just get the foundation in place & let the models work themse!
lves out over time in individual wgs and let XSLT be the glue between the early products and late standards".
-- Weijing Chen
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