RE: Proposed Resolution to PROT I-D Issues List

["McDonald, Ira" <imcdonald@sharplabs.com>]

Hi,

About hosting the NetConf XSD elsewhere (than just the RFC):

(1) As David Harrington just observed, this will be done
    anyway, just as now happens with MIBs

(2) Even an 'official' hosting elsewhere (per the eventual 
    NetConf RFC) isn't any help - because really almost no 
    one _does_ read the RFC - they read the machine-readable
    portions out of context.

(3) Repairing bugs in XSD hosted elsewhere is tricky, because
    XML in general and XSD in particular have serious unsolved
    problems of version control and identification - just
    overwriting an undated generic link for the XSD 'works', 
    but not in any predictable way - each implementation may
    have picked up the XSD via that link at a different point
    in time.

(4) If the 'bug' is determined to be in the sainted plaintext,
    then fixing the outboard XSD won't help at all.

(5) As Wes Hardaker alludes to below, the RFC update, approval,
    and publication process is an order of magnitude too slow
    to be helpful.

Cheers,
- Ira

PS - Separately from "version" in XML documents, the problem
of "namespace" is awful.  W3C and other standards organizations
have no concensus solution.  The current most widespread kludge
is to _never_ change the "namespace" - but just keep putting more 
stuff in the latest "version" of the XSD in the same namespace.



Ira McDonald (Musician / Software Architect)
Blue Roof Music / High North Inc
PO Box 221  Grand Marais, MI  49839
phone: +1-906-494-2434
email: imcdonald@sharplabs.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Wes Hardaker [mailto:wjhns1@hardakers.net]
Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2005 1:29 AM
To: Andy Bierman
Cc: sberl@cisco.com; 'McDonald, Ira'; 'Randy Presuhn';
netconf@ops.ietf.org
Subject: Re: Proposed Resolution to PROT I-D Issues List



Andy> Echoing one last word on XSD vs. plaintext -- if the XSD doesn't
Andy> match the text then we fix whichever one is broken.

Nice in theory, but not nice in the IETF.

1) the IETF standards track provides strict controls on updating documents.

2) updates never happen quickly.  The editor queue alone would be too
   long to change something.

One solution would be to host the XSD elsewhere and reference it, but
that's likely not acceptable from a standards process either.

-- 
"In the bathtub of history the truth is harder to hold than the soap,
 and much more difficult to find."  -- Terry Pratchett

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