Re: Where do we go from here?

[Randy Bush <randy@psg.com>]

> when one is managing a critical piece of equipment, the question
> of "will the box do the right thing when it reboots?" is so
> important that the preferred way of making configuration changes
> is to modify the box's configuration file[*] then trigger a
> reboot to see whether the wretched thing comes up correctly.

well, the more ideal situation is to upload the config and ask
that it become the current config, and have extreme confidence
that this is the same as if it booted it cold.

welcome to juniper, gated, ...

but one also wants a selection of bootable configs, rollback, etc.

welcome to dreamland ...

> So when I hear people talking about XML configuration, what I think of
> is (a) some kind of XML structure for this sort of thing and (b) a set
> of templates (or schemas, or whatever the heck they're called in the
> XML universe) that allow one to configure the things that every device
> in a certain catagory will need to have configured.

and here is where i suspect there is non-trivial misunderstanding.

given cli
   place-to-stick-finger = right-ear

xml, or any self-identifying tagging system, will be helpful when
the cli would change to
   finger-sticking-place = right-ear

as it would likely be represented as something like
   <finger>
     <stick>
       <location>
         right-ear
       </location>
     </stick>
   </finger>
in either case.

but, without a dictionary of the right-hand side values, i.e.
"right-ear", or full tagging for that stuff too (not easy if
right-ear is an ip address, snmp community, etc.), xml only
got you half of the way there.

and this begs the question if all vendors support fingers that
can be stuck in locations.

randy


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