[occi-wg] Nouns and Verbs

[Richard Davies]

> Keeping the analogy of renting physical infrastructure in mind, 
> I think it is completely sufficient to expose operations in the 
> API for defining network membership (which clearly sets up 
> virtual networks between VMs) and static IP addresses or 
> "acquire via DHCP" for the actual interfaces. This is like 
> specifying which cables to connect to which interface, which is 
> a pure infrastructure-related issue.

This is very much where I was heading - all we need is identifiers for the
virtual networks ('red', 'blue'), etc, not any verbs or configuration of
these themselves.

> VM1:
>    eth0 connected to "blue" network, static IP 192.168.0.1
>    eth1 connected to "red" network, DHCP
> 
> VM2:
>    eth0 connected to "blue" network, DHCP
> 
> VM3:
>    eth0 connected to "red" network, static IP 123.123.123.123

Note that the static IPs and DHCP are configuration of the servers' network
interfaces, not of the network itself. The _only_ reference to the network
itself is the identifier "red" or "blue" - so it needs only a noun, not any
verbs or attributes.

'Active' networks with actual behaviours in the network object (e.g. a DHCP
server in the network, attributes to configure that server, verbs to control
the server) might also be possible as vendor extensions, but aren't the base
case.

Richard.