Re: [NGO] OO-ish-ness: Super models and meta models

[Phil Shafer <phil at juniper.net>]

Jon Saperia writes:
>this is an interesting topic,  Can you write one or two lines more  
>about what you mean please?

At the last IETF, there were some expressions that YANG was great
but lacked "meta-model" features that would give it the OO-ness
that it needs.  I don't see this, since we are not working in an
OO world.

(By this, I mean that there aren't object-ids trafficed between the
client and server, nor are there objects referenced in RPCs.  NETCONF
works in XML hierarchies, and YANG follows that model, which is why
there's nothing OO about it.)

I understand that many applications are written using OO tools, but
this doesn't reflect in the content carried thru NETCONF, so I have
a hard time seeing what OO-ish constructs need to be expressed within
a YANG module.

For example, at the OPS office hours, Randy mentioned that "class"
gives a clue to the application that it's dealing with something
more heavy-weight that needs special handling.  My response was
that this sounds like a presentation issue, and should probably be
solved with a extention/statement that says "this is a heavy-weight
thing".  Different applications may have different views on what
"heavy-weight" means or how to represent it.

So I'm looking to understand what OO adds and where it needs to add it.
(Yes, I understand the value of OO design principles, I just don't
understand where they dovetail into our data modeling language.)
So what does YANG need and how will it impact the data organization,
the operations, and the transport of that data and operations?

Thanks,
 Phil
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