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Validating anydata in YANG Library context
draft-aelhassany-anydata-validation-01

Document Type Active Internet-Draft (individual)
Author Ahmed Elhassany
Last updated 2024-03-17
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draft-aelhassany-anydata-validation-01
NETCONF                                                     A. Elhassany
Internet-Draft                                                  Swisscom
Intended status: Standards Track                           17 March 2024
Expires: 18 September 2024

               Validating anydata in YANG Library context
                 draft-aelhassany-anydata-validation-01

Abstract

   This document describes a method to use YANG Library [RFC8525] to
   validate YANG data nodes that are children of an "anydata" data node.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.  The list of current Internet-
   Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on 18 September 2024.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2024 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/
   license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.
   Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
   and restrictions with respect to this document.  Code Components
   extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as
   described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are
   provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.

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Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
     1.1.  Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   2.  Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  Validating "anydata" Data Tree  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   4.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   5.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   6.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     6.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
     6.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   Acknowledgements  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5

1.  Introduction

   YANG [RFC7950] defines the "anydata" statement to represent an
   unknown set of YANG nodes for which the data model is not known at
   module design time.  However, YANG [RFC7950] left the verification of
   the "anydata" tree open to be done using external means.  Several
   IETF models, e.g., [RFC8526], [RFC9144], [RFC8639], [RFC8641], and
   [RFC8040], use "anydata" in their definitions.  Current YANG
   implementations accept syntactically valid YANG data nodes as
   children of an "anydata" node but do not check the data type of these
   data nodes against a YANG schema.  This creates a real problem for
   any consumer of these models when validating all leaves of the YANG
   data tree.  For instance, a YANG-Push receiver described in
   [I-D.netana-nmop-yang-kafka-integration] is not able to fully
   validate the messages streamed by network nodes.

   YANG Schema Mount [RFC8528] allows mounting complete data models at
   implementation and run time.  While powerful, schema mount cannot
   address use cases where the user selects an arbitrary subset of an
   instantiated data tree, such as YANG-Push [RFC8641].  A current
   proposed approach, YANG Full Include YANG Full Include
   [I-D.jouqui-netmod-yang-full-include], complements YANG Schema Mount
   and applies at design time, yet cannot address dynamic filtering of
   an instantiated YANG data tree.

   This document propeses using the YANG Library [RFC8525] to define the
   context in which anydata trees are validated.  This would require the
   YANG tooling to implement an optional flag that enables a flag for
   validating "anydata" subtrees in the context of a YANG Library.

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1.1.  Requirements Language

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
   "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in BCP
   14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
   capitals, as shown here.

2.  Terminology

   This document uses the terminology defined in YANG [RFC7950] for
   schema node and schema tree but refines data node and data tree to be
   more precise.

   *  data node: A node in the schema tree that can be instantiated in a
      data tree.  One of container, leaf, leaf-list, list, anydata, and
      anyxml.  This document does not change how YANG handles anyxml
      data nodes.

   *  instantiated data node: an instantiated instance of a data node
      that contains before fully qualified name (module namespace +
      identifier) for the data node and the data modeled within YANG.

   *  instantiated data tree: is what YANG [RFC7950] defines as "data
      tree".  Adding the term "instantiated" precisely indicates that
      this tree is an instance of specific data modeled with YANG.

   *  data tree: a tree of data nodes (with no values).

3.  Validating "anydata" Data Tree

   The current YANG encodings, XML, JSON, and CBOR, encode instantiated
   data nodes with fully qualified name using the module's namespace and
   a local name.  The module's namespace can be either explicit or
   assumed from a default namespace defined in the top data tree.

   This document introduces a new YANG validation option: anydata-
   subtree-validation.  In this mode, a YANG data parser MUST accept a
   YANG Library as input along the YANG data file.  When this option is
   enabled, any instantiated data node (NodeB) that is a child of
   anydata node (NodeA) is accepted to be valid only if (i) the
   qualified name of the node NodeB is found in one of the data trees
   defined by the YANG library AND (ii) the instantiated data tree
   rooted by NodeB is valid incomplete instantiated data tree according
   to the data node of NodeB.

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   The first condition ensures the completeness of the YANG Library, and
   no subtree can be included as a child of anydata node unless a schema
   is defined for all the children of anydata subtree and specified in
   the YANG Library.  The second condition applies a regular YANG
   validation against the subtree of anydata, considering that the
   subtree of anydata could be generated using an XPath [RFC8641] or a
   subtree filter [RFC6241].  Thus, the validator MUST consider this
   subtree incomplete and ignore any missing leaves.

4.  IANA Considerations

   This memo includes no request to IANA.

5.  Security Considerations

   TBD

6.  References

6.1.  Normative References

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.

   [RFC7950]  Bjorklund, M., Ed., "The YANG 1.1 Data Modeling Language",
              RFC 7950, DOI 10.17487/RFC7950, August 2016,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7950>.

   [RFC8174]  Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
              2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
              May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.

   [RFC8525]  Bierman, A., Bjorklund, M., Schoenwaelder, J., Watsen, K.,
              and R. Wilton, "YANG Library", RFC 8525,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8525, March 2019,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8525>.

6.2.  Informative References

   [I-D.jouqui-netmod-yang-full-include]
              Quilbeuf, J., Claise, B., and T. Joubert, "YANG Full
              Embed", Work in Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-jouqui-
              netmod-yang-full-include-01, 4 March 2024,
              <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-jouqui-
              netmod-yang-full-include-01>.

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   [I-D.netana-nmop-yang-kafka-integration]
              Graf, T. and A. Elhassany, "An Architecture for YANG-Push
              to Apache Kafka Integration", Work in Progress, Internet-
              Draft, draft-netana-nmop-yang-kafka-integration-01, 16
              March 2024, <https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-
              netana-nmop-yang-kafka-integration-01>.

   [RFC6241]  Enns, R., Ed., Bjorklund, M., Ed., Schoenwaelder, J., Ed.,
              and A. Bierman, Ed., "Network Configuration Protocol
              (NETCONF)", RFC 6241, DOI 10.17487/RFC6241, June 2011,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6241>.

   [RFC8040]  Bierman, A., Bjorklund, M., and K. Watsen, "RESTCONF
              Protocol", RFC 8040, DOI 10.17487/RFC8040, January 2017,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8040>.

   [RFC8526]  Bjorklund, M., Schoenwaelder, J., Shafer, P., Watsen, K.,
              and R. Wilton, "NETCONF Extensions to Support the Network
              Management Datastore Architecture", RFC 8526,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8526, March 2019,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8526>.

   [RFC8528]  Bjorklund, M. and L. Lhotka, "YANG Schema Mount",
              RFC 8528, DOI 10.17487/RFC8528, March 2019,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8528>.

   [RFC8639]  Voit, E., Clemm, A., Gonzalez Prieto, A., Nilsen-Nygaard,
              E., and A. Tripathy, "Subscription to YANG Notifications",
              RFC 8639, DOI 10.17487/RFC8639, September 2019,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8639>.

   [RFC8641]  Clemm, A. and E. Voit, "Subscription to YANG Notifications
              for Datastore Updates", RFC 8641, DOI 10.17487/RFC8641,
              September 2019, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8641>.

   [RFC9144]  Clemm, A., Qu, Y., Tantsura, J., and A. Bierman,
              "Comparison of Network Management Datastore Architecture
              (NMDA) Datastores", RFC 9144, DOI 10.17487/RFC9144,
              December 2021, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc9144>.

Acknowledgements

   The authors would like to thank Jean Quilbeuf, Thomas Graf, Benoit
   Claise, and Alex Huang Feng for their review and valuable comments.

Author's Address

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   Ahmed Elhassany
   Swisscom
   Binzring 17
   CH- Zuerich 8045
   Switzerland
   Email: ahmed.elhassany@swisscom.com

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