[Nml-wg] Possibility of changes (was Re: Interface vs Port)

[Jeff W. Boote]

On Aug 30, 2011, at 9:36 AM, Jeroen van der Ham wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> Just out of curiosity, how much change is still acceptable for current implementations?
> 
> We've had two discussions now where the argument has come up that there are currently implementations that do things a certain way, and that we therefore should be hesitant to change.
> 
> Now I'm certainly not planning a major overhaul of NML, and things have been reasonably static for a while, but as far as I know we have not reached a status of complete agreement. To me, we're still in a status where implementations based on NML are taking a risk.

Changing the name of one of the primary elements in NML 'Port' is a major overhaul.

> 
> For example, I'm currently working on an implementation of topologies cooperating with the NSI plugfest. This implementation is deliberately not using the NML namespace, because I don't want developers to feel that we've reached agreement yet.
> Things may still change, and if they would, it should not be a big deal to them.

That's too bad. I think it would have been much better to use it so you could find out if there were any deficiencies and have real-world experience as to the issues we are discussing. If there were real problems that could not be addressed in a straight forward way, that is a reason to change the schema.

The endless discussions of Port vs Interface that have gone on for 5 years now are just a distraction. I sometimes think we would have been better off to come up with completely bogus names for concepts. A 'Foo' is connected to a 'Bar'... would that have been better?

jeff


> 
> Jeroen.
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