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Shepherd writeup
draft-ietf-cbor-7049bis

As required by RFC 4858, this is the current template for the Document
Shepherd Write-Up. Changes are expected over time.

This version is dated 1 November 2019.

(1) What type of RFC is being requested (BCP, Proposed Standard, Internet
Standard, Informational, Experimental, or Historic)? Why is this the proper
type of RFC? Is this type of RFC indicated in the title page header?

Internet Standard. This is the proper type of RFC, as CBOR has achieved a high
degree of technical maturity and its implementations have obtained successful
operational experience. This is indicated in the title page header.

(2) The IESG approval announcement includes a Document Announcement Write-Up.
Please provide such a Document Announcement Write-Up. Recent examples can be
found in the "Action" announcements for approved documents. The approval
announcement contains the following sections:

Technical Summary:

The Concise Binary Object Representation (CBOR) is a data format whose design
goals include the possibility of extremely small code size, fairly small
message size, and extensibility without the need for version negotiation. These
design goals make it different from earlier binary serializations such as ASN.1
and MessagePack.

Working Group Summary:

Was there anything in WG process that is worth noting? For example, was there
controversy about particular points or were there decisions where the consensus
was particularly rough?

It is worth noting the controversy about the text on how generic decoders
handle duplicate map keys. While RFC7049 stated that decoders cannot prescribe
a specific handling of duplicated map keys, except it might consider the map
malformed, part of the working group wanted the document to state more
precisely what the decoder should do, and possibly what the protocol using CBOR
should do (e.g. use first entry). This was considered, but would have made
existing implementation non-compliant with this specification. Consensus was
difficult to call, but in the end some text was added to explain the different
options (reject the map, accept the map including the duplicates, lose some
entries) and give guidance to implementations on what is expected of the
application in every one of these cases. (See section 5.6)

Document Quality:

Are there existing implementations of the protocol? Have a significant number
of vendors indicated their plan to implement the specification? Are there any
reviewers that merit special mention as having done a thorough review, e.g.,
one that resulted in important changes or a conclusion that the document had no
substantive issues? If there was a MIB Doctor, YANG Doctor, Media Type or other
expert review, what was its course (briefly)? In the case of a Media Type
review, on what date was the request posted?

There exist a significant number of implementations of this specification, see
https://cbor.io/impls.html for a non-exhaustive list. Several of the working
group participants have provided continuous reviews to the document, and have
agreed that the document is ready for publication.

Personnel:

Francesca Palombini is the Document Shepherd. Barry Leiba is the Responsible
Area Director.

(3) Briefly describe the review of this document that was performed by the
Document Shepherd. If this version of the document is not ready for
publication, please explain why the document is being forwarded to the IESG.

I have reviewed this document several times during its lifetime, and believe it
is ready for publication.

(4) Does the document Shepherd have any concerns about the depth or breadth of
the reviews that have been performed?

No.

(5) Do portions of the document need review from a particular or from broader
perspective, e.g., security, operational complexity, AAA, DNS, DHCP, XML, or
internationalization? If so, describe the review that took place.

Not particularly.

(6) Describe any specific concerns or issues that the Document Shepherd has
with this document that the Responsible Area Director and/or the IESG should be
aware of? For example, perhaps he or she is uncomfortable with certain parts of
the document, or has concerns whether there really is a need for it. In any
event, if the WG has discussed those issues and has indicated that it still
wishes to advance the document, detail those concerns here.

No concerns.

(7) Has each author confirmed that any and all appropriate IPR disclosures
required for full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79 have
already been filed. If not, explain why?

The authors are in full compliance with BCPs 78 and 79 and there is no known
IPR directly related to this document.

(8) Has an IPR disclosure been filed that references this document? If so,
summarize any WG discussion and conclusion regarding the IPR disclosures.

No.

(9) How solid is the WG consensus behind this document? Does it represent the
strong concurrence of a few individuals, with others being silent, or does the
WG as a whole understand and agree with it?

The working group consensus is solid. One issue has created more contention,
and is reported in (2).

(10) Has anyone threatened an appeal or otherwise indicated extreme discontent?
If so, please summarise the areas of conflict in separate email messages to the
Responsible Area Director. (It should be in a separate email because this
questionnaire is publicly available.)

Although some points were contentious (see above), noone has threatened an
appeal or indicated extreme discontent.

(11) Identify any ID nits the Document Shepherd has found in this document.
(See http://www.ietf.org/tools/idnits/ and the Internet-Drafts Checklist).
Boilerplate checks are not enough; this check needs to be thorough.

No nits were found.

(12) Describe how the document meets any required formal review criteria, such
as the MIB Doctor, YANG Doctor, media type, and URI type reviews.

No required formal review was needed for this revision.

(13) Have all references within this document been identified as either
normative or informative?

Yes.

(14) Are there normative references to documents that are not ready for
advancement or are otherwise in an unclear state? If such normative references
exist, what is the plan for their completion?

No.

(15) Are there downward normative references references (see RFC 3967)? If so,
list these downward references to support the Area Director in the Last Call
procedure.

There are no downward normative references. There are 3 non-RFC normative
references: ECMA262, IEEE754, and IEEE Std. 1003.1 (TIME_T). IEEE 754 (now 2019
edition) is in a very high state of maturity. The regular expression part
referenced from ECMA 262 also is at the needed level of maturity (the document
only references the approximate format as a tag validity criteria). The UNIX
("Posix") time format described in IEEE Std. 1003.1 is also very stable and
well-understood in the community.

(16) Will publication of this document change the status of any existing RFCs?
Are those RFCs listed on the title page header, listed in the abstract, and
discussed in the introduction? If the RFCs are not listed in the Abstract and
Introduction, explain why, and point to the part of the document where the
relationship of this document to the other RFCs is discussed. If this
information is not in the document, explain why the WG considers it unnecessary.

Yes, this document will obsolete RFC7049. That is clearly stated in the title
page, abstract and introduction.

(17) Describe the Document Shepherd's review of the IANA considerations
section, especially with regard to its consistency with the body of the
document. Confirm that all protocol extensions that the document makes are
associated with the appropriate reservations in IANA registries. Confirm that
any referenced IANA registries have been clearly identified. Confirm that newly
created IANA registries include a detailed specification of the initial
contents for the registry, that allocations procedures for future registrations
are defined, and a reasonable name for the new registry has been suggested (see
RFC 8126).

The IANA considerations section is different from RFC7049 in the fact that it
points to the registries that were created in RFC7049. It additionally requires
IANA to update the references of these existing registries to point to this
specification. For one existing registry, the contact and change control have
been updated. For the Tags Registry, the registration policy has changed, with
consensus of the working group.

(18) List any new IANA registries that require Expert Review for future
allocations. Provide any public guidance that the IESG would find useful in
selecting the IANA Experts for these new registries.

No new IANA registries have been created.

(19) Describe reviews and automated checks performed by the Document Shepherd
to validate sections of the document written in a formal language, such as XML
code, BNF rules, MIB definitions, YANG modules, etc.

No automated checks were performed.

(20) If the document contains a YANG module, has the module been checked with
any of the recommended validation tools
(https://trac.ietf.org/trac/ops/wiki/yang-review-tools) for syntax and
formatting validation? If there are any resulting errors or warnings, what is
the justification for not fixing them at this time? Does the YANG module comply
with the Network Management Datastore Architecture (NMDA) as specified in
RFC8342?

The document does not contain any YANG module.
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