[Nml-wg] About modelisation of the network description

[Aaron Brown]

Evangelos Chaniotakis wrote:
>  I agree, but I say: formalize that pop1 is the "abstracted" view and 
> the rest are
> the "detailed" view. If we did that, a network information DB could 
> hand out
> that single document and applications would select the view that's most
> appropriate for their demands and capabilities.
> In the snippet above, there is no way to tell  if pop1 is a real node 
> or a "virtual"
> node. (and, if you start labeling things, you end up doing something 
> quite similar
> to views)
>
> And as far as  treating domains and networks as generic Nodes with 
> interfaces
> poking out: No problem, and I don't see it conflicting with the domain 
> / view /
> network model. They could (and probably should) all have the NetworkNode
> aspect.
>
So, if one is creating a specific view, why is it being limited to a 
view of a single administrative network? Couldn't I create a 'view' of 
the set of pinger measurement points where the set of nodes spanned 
across a large number of administrative domains? I think the view 
concept is really the same as the 'group' element that we discussed at 
OGF. It's basically a grouping of various network elements that have 
some relation. Defining what this relation is in a view seems to depend 
on the context. Say a user requests all the views that i've defined. How 
does it know which one to select? i.e. How do we assign meaning to this 
arbitrary grouping of elements. Once we've defined on how to assign 
meaning to these groupings, I think the difference between a group and a 
view goes away. I.e. how is "i know what group X means" different than 
"i know what view X means"?

Cheers,
Aaron