Subject: [netmod] Having a Normative Reference "For every (single) reference statement"

From: "Ersue, Mehmet (NSN - DE/Munich)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 2 Dec 2009 21:06:27 +0100

Dear All,

the usage guideline document says:

"For every reference statement which appears in a module contained in
the specification, which identifies a separate document, a
corresponding normative reference to that document SHOULD appear in
the Normative References section."

This is contradicting with the definition in RFC 3967:

"a normative reference specifies a document that must be read to fully
understand or implement the subject matter in the new RFC, or whose
contents are effectively part of the new RFC, as its omission would
leave the new RFC incompletely specified."

Following the usage guideline document NETCONF Monitoring draft has 
normative references for __all__ documents referenced in identity
statements 
for the SSH, SOAP, BEEP and TLS drafts as well as for XSD, RNG, YANG,
YIN.

E.g.
  identity netconf-tls {
    base transport;
    reference
      "RFC 5539 <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5539> : NETCONF over
Transport Layer Security (TLS)";
  }

Where I understand a normative reference in the "Normative References"
chapter for XSD, RNG, YANG and YIN for compliancy reasons I do not 
understand the normative references for SSH, SOAP, BEEP and TLS. 
YANG and XSD define a format which can be seen as normative. 
BEEP and TLS define a transport which is only referred.

The identities for SSH, SOAP, BEEP and TLS are there only to complete 
the list of identities for NETCONF transports. The SSH, SOAP, BEEP and 
TLS documents are not necessary to read to understand nor to implement 
the monitoring YANG module. And they don't have any XSD or YANG module
defined. Nobody needs to be compliant with the content of these RFCs.

Do we really need normative references "For every (single) reference
statement"
in a YANG module or only for those who are referenced because of
compliance 
reasons or define a YANG or XSD module which is imported or important 
for the referring module?

I actually could go with it but I'm still trying hard to find a logical 
reason without success . . .

Cheers,
Mehmet

---

From: Juergen Schoenwaelder <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Dec 2009 00:14:15 +0100

> the Normative References section."
 
Yes, I think this goes to far by saying the reference should be
normative. Here is a data point: The draft-ietf-netmod-yang-types-05
has about 32 informative references because of 'reference' statements.

[If we make all these references normative, the YANG data types
 document will likely never ever leave Proposed Standard status and
 all documents importing one of the data types likely never leave
 Proposed Standard as well. :-]

/js

-- 
Juergen Schoenwaelder           Jacobs University Bremen gGmbH
Phone: +49 421 200 3587         Campus Ring 1, 28759 Bremen, Germany
Fax:   +49 421 200 3103         <http://www.jacobs-university.de/>

---

From: Andy Bierman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:20:26 -0800

>  Proposed Standard as well. :-]

I can just remove that paragraph, and not say anything
about object reference statements. Or change SHOULD to MAY,
and normative to informative:

   For every reference statement which appears in a module contained in
   the specification, which identifies a separate document, a
   corresponding informative reference to that document MAY appear in
   the Informative References section."

> /js

Andy

---

From: Juergen Schoenwaelder <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Dec 2009 00:33:38 +0100

>    the Informative References section."

I believe the RFC editor checks that all quotes of the form RFC NNNN
resolve to a reference in the document. The MAY does not make any
sense - of course any reference MAY be in the references. The decision
whether such a reference in normative or not should be taken by the
document author and not prescribed. Hence my preferred version:

  For every reference statement which appears in a module contained 
  in the specification, which identifies a separate document, a
  corresponding reference to that document SHOULD appear in
  the References section.

/js

---

From: "Ersue, Mehmet (NSN - DE/Munich)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 3 Dec 2009 18:50:19 +0100

Sounds good.

This lets it open and the main guidance is given in RFC 3967.

Cheers,
Mehmet

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ext Juergen Schoenwaelder 
> [mailto:[email-masked]] 
> Sent: Thursday, December 03, 2009 12:34 AM
> To: Andy Bierman
> Cc: Ersue, Mehmet (NSN - DE/Munich); NETMOD Working Group; 
> ext Mark Scott
> Subject: Re: [netmod] Having a Normative Reference "For every 
> (single) reference statement"
>