Use node-id instead of uuid for indexing network elements

[oscargdd]

RFC 8345 uses node-id for the indexing of the nodes. It would be better to have the same convention. Either reuse the node-id type, or use inet:uri. This way it is not restricted to the use of uuids.

typedef node-id {
       type inet:uri;
       description
         "Identifier for a node.  The precise structure of the node-id
          will be up to the implementation.  For example, some
          implementations MAY pick a URI that includes the network-id
          as part of the path.  The identifier SHOULD be chosen
          such that the same node in a real network topology will
          always be identified through the same identifier, even if
          the data model is instantiated in separate datastores.  An
          implementation MAY choose to capture semantics in the
          identifier -- for example, to indicate the type of node.";
     }

[italobusi]

2023-05-17 Network Inventory weekly call

It was clarified the issue applies to the identification of the network element and not to the identification of the components

Using the node-id, which is an URI, allows also using UUID to identify NEs but allows other types of identification

Chaode has raised concerns with using the node-id to correlate a node in the topology model with a NE in the inventory model in case of multi-layer NE

Need to continue the discussion next week

[italobusi]

2023-06-14 Network Inventory weekly call

It was clarified the issue applies to the identification of the network element and not to the identification of the components

Using the node-id, which is an URI, allows also using UUID to identifiy NEs but allows other types of identification

Chaode has raised concerns with using the node-id to correlate a node in the topology model with a NE in the inventory model in case of multi-layer NE

Need to continue the discussiong it

It has been clarified that the URI used for ne-id is not correlated with the node-id in the topology model: the navigation between the inventory and the topology view can be done using the ietf-hw-inventory-ref-topo model

Agreement to change the key for the network-element list to be an URI rather than a UUID

[italobusi]

2024-01-17 Network Inventory weekly call

The list keys used to be UUID in the CCAMP WG draft but the ne-id and component-id have been defined as string, with the plan to re-discuss their types at a later stage

Jan: strings are hard to interpret but keys are intended just to identify something so they do not need to be interpreted

Agreed to keep the ne-id and component-id as string to keep the model very flexible (URI and UUID are also strings)