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Transaction ID Mechanism for NETCONF
draft-ietf-netconf-transaction-id-03

Document Type Active Internet-Draft (netconf WG)
Author Jan Lindblad
Last updated 2024-03-01
Replaces draft-lindblad-netconf-transaction-id
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draft-ietf-netconf-transaction-id-03
NETCONF                                                      J. Lindblad
Internet-Draft                                             Cisco Systems
Intended status: Standards Track                            1 March 2024
Expires: 2 September 2024

                  Transaction ID Mechanism for NETCONF
                  draft-ietf-netconf-transaction-id-03

Abstract

   NETCONF clients and servers often need to have a synchronized view of
   the server's configuration data stores.  The volume of configuration
   data in a server may be very large, while data store changes
   typically are small when observed at typical client resynchronization
   intervals.

   Rereading the entire data store and analyzing the response for
   changes is an inefficient mechanism for synchronization.  This
   document specifies an extension to NETCONF that allows clients and
   servers to keep synchronized with a much smaller data exchange and
   without any need for servers to store information about the clients.

Discussion Venues

   This note is to be removed before publishing as an RFC.

   Discussion of this document takes place on the Network Configuration
   Working Group mailing list (netconf@ietf.org), which is archived at
   https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/browse/netconf/.

   Source for this draft and an issue tracker can be found at
   https://github.com/netconf-wg/transaction-id.

Status of This Memo

   This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
   provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.

   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
   Task Force (IETF).  Note that other groups may also distribute
   working documents as Internet-Drafts.  The list of current Internet-
   Drafts is at https://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/.

   Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
   and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
   time.  It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
   material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."

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   This Internet-Draft will expire on 2 September 2024.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2024 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
   document authors.  All rights reserved.

   This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
   Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/
   license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.
   Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
   and restrictions with respect to this document.  Code Components
   extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as
   described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are
   provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   2.  Conventions and Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   3.  NETCONF Txid Extension  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     3.1.  Use Cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   5
     3.2.  General Txid Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
     3.3.  Initial Configuration Retrieval . . . . . . . . . . . . .   7
     3.4.  Subsequent Configuration Retrieval  . . . . . . . . . . .   9
     3.5.  Candidate Datastore Configuration Retrieval . . . . . . .  13
     3.6.  Conditional Transactions  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
       3.6.1.  Error response on Out of band change  . . . . . . . .  16
       3.6.2.  Txid History size consideration . . . . . . . . . . .  17
     3.7.  Candidate Datastore Transactions  . . . . . . . . . . . .  18
     3.8.  Dependencies within Transactions  . . . . . . . . . . . .  20
     3.9.  Other NETCONF Operations  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  23
     3.10. YANG-Push Subscriptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  24
     3.11. Comparing YANG Datastores . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  25
   4.  Txid Mechanisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  27
     4.1.  The etag attribute txid mechanism . . . . . . . . . . . .  27
     4.2.  The last-modified attribute txid mechanism  . . . . . . .  28
     4.3.  Common features to both etag and last-modified txid
           mechanisms  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  29
       4.3.1.  Candidate Datastore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  30
       4.3.2.  Namespaces and Attribute Placement  . . . . . . . . .  30
   5.  Txid Mechanism Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  31
     5.1.  Initial Configuration Response  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  31
       5.1.1.  With etag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  31
       5.1.2.  With last-modified  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  36
     5.2.  Configuration Response Pruning  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  39
     5.3.  Configuration Change  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  43
     5.4.  Conditional Configuration Change  . . . . . . . . . . . .  47

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     5.5.  Reading from the Candidate Datastore  . . . . . . . . . .  50
     5.6.  Commit  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  53
     5.7.  YANG-Push . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  53
     5.8.  NMDA Compare  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  56
   6.  YANG Modules  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  58
     6.1.  Base module for txid in NETCONF . . . . . . . . . . . . .  58
     6.2.  Additional support for txid in YANG-Push  . . . . . . . .  63
     6.3.  Additional support for txid in NMDA Compare . . . . . . .  65
   7.  Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  67
     7.1.  NACM Access Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  67
       7.1.1.  Hash-based Txid Algorithms  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  68
     7.2.  Unchanged Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  68
   8.  IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  68
   9.  Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  69
     9.1.  Major changes in -03 since -02  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  69
     9.2.  Major changes in -02 since -01  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  70
     9.3.  Major changes in -01 since -00  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  70
     9.4.  Major changes in draft-ietf-netconf-transaction-id-00 since
           -02 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  71
     9.5.  Major changes in -02 since -01  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  72
     9.6.  Major changes in -01 since -00  . . . . . . . . . . . . .  72
   10. References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  73
     10.1.  Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  73
     10.2.  Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  74
   Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  75
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  75

1.  Introduction

   When a NETCONF client wishes to initiate a new configuration
   transaction with a NETCONF server, a frequently occurring use case is
   for the client to find out if the configuration has changed since the
   client last communicated with the server.  Such changes could occur
   for example if another NETCONF client has made changes, or another
   system or operator made changes through other means than NETCONF.

   One way of detecting a change for a client would be to retrieve the
   entire configuration from the server, then compare the result with a
   previously stored copy at the client side.  This approach is not
   popular with most NETCONF users, however, since it would often be
   very expensive in terms of communications and computation cost.

   Furthermore, even if the configuration is reported to be unchanged,
   that will not guarantee that the configuration remains unchanged when
   a client sends a subsequent change request, a few moments later.

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   In order to simplify the task of tracking changes, a NETCONF server
   could implement a meta level transaction tag or timestamp for an
   entire configuration datastore or YANG subtree, and offer clients a
   way to read and compare this tag or timestamp.  If the tag or
   timestamp is unchanged, clients can avoid performing expensive
   operations.  Such tags and timestamps are referred to as a
   transaction id (txid) in this document.

   Evidence of a transaction id feature being demanded by clients is
   that several server implementors have built proprietary and mutually
   incompatible mechanisms for obtaining a transaction id from a NETCONF
   server.

   RESTCONF, [RFC8040], defines a mechanism for detecting changes in
   configuration subtrees based on Entity-Tags (ETags) and Last-Modified
   txid values.

   In conjunction with this, RESTCONF provides a way to make
   configuration changes conditional on the server configuration being
   untouched by others.  This mechanism leverages [RFC7232] "Hypertext
   Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Conditional Requests".

   This document defines similar functionality for NETCONF, [RFC6241],
   for config true data.  It also ties this in with YANG-Push,
   [RFC8641], and "Comparison of Network Management Datastore
   Architecture (NMDA) Datastores", [RFC9144].  Config false data
   (operational data, state, statistics) is left out of scope from this
   document.

   This document does not change the RESTCONF protocol in any way, and
   is carefully written to allow implementations to share much of the
   code between NETCONF and RESTCONF.  Note that the NETCONF txid
   mechanism described in this document uses XML attributes, but the
   RESTCONF mechanism relies on HTTP Headers instead, and use none of
   the XML attributes described in this document, nor JSON Metadata (see
   [RFC7952]).

2.  Conventions and Definitions

   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
   "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in
   BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
   capitals, as shown here.

   This document uses the terminology defined in [RFC6241], [RFC7950],
   [RFC7952], [RFC8040], [RFC8641], and [RFC9144].

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   In addition, this document defines the following terms:

   Versioned node  A node in the instantiated YANG data tree for which
      the server maintains a transaction id (txid) value.

   Transaction-id Mechanism  A protocol implementation that fulfills the
      principles described in the first part, NETCONF Txid Extension
      (Section 3), of this document.

   Txid  Abbreviation of Transaction-id

   C-txid  Client side transaction-id, i.e. a txid value maintained or
      provided by a NETCONF client application.

   S-txid  Server side transaction-id, i.e. a txid value maintained or
      sent by a NETCONF server.

   Txid History  Temporally ordered list of txid values used by the
      server.  Allows the server to determine if a given txid occurred
      more recently than another txid.

3.  NETCONF Txid Extension

   This document describes a NETCONF extension which modifies the
   behavior of get-config, get-data, edit-config, edit-data, discard-
   changes, copy-config, delete-config and commit such that clients are
   able to conditionally retrieve and update the configuration in a
   NETCONF server.

   For servers implementing YANG-Push, an extension for conveying txid
   updates as part of subscription updates is also defined.  A similar
   extension is also defined for servers implememnting "Comparison of
   NMDA Datastores".

   Several low level mechanisms could be defined to fulfill the
   requirements for efficient client-server txid synchronization.  This
   document defines two such mechanisms, the etag txid mechanism and the
   last-modified txid mechanism.  Additional mechanisms could be added
   in future.  This document is therefore divided into a two parts; the
   first part discusses the txid mechanism in an abstract, protocol-
   neutral way.  The second part, Txid Mechanisms (Section 4), then adds
   the protocol layer, and provides concrete encoding examples.

3.1.  Use Cases

   The common use cases for txid mecahnisms are briefly discussed here.

   Initial configuration retrieval  When the client initially connects

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      to a server, it may be interested to acquire a current view of
      (parts of) the server's configuration.  In order to be able to
      efficiently detect changes later, it may also be interested to
      store meta level txid information for subtrees of the
      configuration.

   Subsequent configuration retrieval  When a client needs to reread
      (parts of) the server's configuration, it may be interested to
      leverage the txid meta data it has stored by requesting the server
      to prune the response so that it does not repeat configuration
      data that the client is already aware of.

   Configuration update with txid return  When a client issues a
      transaction towards a server, it may be interested to also learn
      the new txid meta data the server has stored for the updated parts
      of the configuration.

   Conditional configuration change  When a client issues a transaction
      towards a server, it may specify txid meta data for the
      transaction in order to allow the server to verify that the client
      is up to date with any changes in the parts of the configuration
      that it is concerned with.  If the txid meta data in the server is
      different than the client expected, the server rejects the
      transaction with a specific error message.

   Subscribe to configuration changes with txid return  When a client
      subscribes to configuration change updates through YANG-Push, it
      may be interested to also learn the the updated txid meta data for
      the changed data trees.

3.2.  General Txid Principles

   All servers implementing a txid mechanism MUST maintain a top level
   server side txid meta data value for each configuration datastore
   supported by the server.  Server side txid is often abbreviated
   s-txid.  Txid mechanism implementations MAY also maintain txid meta
   data values for nodes deeper in the YANG data tree.  The nodes for
   which the server maintains txids are collectively referred to as the
   "Versioned Nodes".

   Server implementors MAY use the YANG extension statement ietf-
   netconf-txid:versioned-node to inform potential clients about which
   YANG nodes the server maintains a txid value for.  Another way to
   discover (a partial) set of Versioned Nodes is for a client to
   request the current configuration with txids.  The returned
   configuration will then have the Versioned Nodes decorated with their
   txid values.

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   Regardless of whether the server declares the Versioned Nodes or not,
   the set of Versioned Nodes in the server's YANG tree MUST remain
   constant, except at system redefining events, such as software
   upgrades or entitlement installations or removals.

   The server returning txid values for the Versioned Nodes MUST ensure
   the txid values are changed every time there has been a configuration
   change at or below the node associated with the txid value.  This
   means any update of a config true node will result in a new txid
   value for all ancestor Versioned Nodes, up to and including the
   datastore root itself.

   This also means a server MUST update the txid value for any nodes
   that change as a result of a configuration change, and their
   ancestors, regardless of source, even if the changed nodes are not
   explicitly part of the change payload.  An example of this is
   dependent data under YANG [RFC7950] when- or choice-statements.

   The server MUST NOT change the txid value of a versioned node unless
   the node itself or a child node of that node has been changed.  The
   server MUST NOT change any txid values due to changes in config false
   data, or any kind of metadata that the server may maintain for YANG
   data tree nodes.

3.3.  Initial Configuration Retrieval

   When a NETCONF server receives a get-config or get-data request
   containing requests for txid values, it MUST, in the reply, return
   txid values for all Versioned Nodes below the point requested by the
   client.

   The exact encoding varies by mechanism, but all txid mechanisms would
   have a special "txid-request" txid value (e.g. "?") which is
   guaranteed to never be used as a normal txid value.  Clients MAY use
   this special txid value associated with one or more nodes in the data
   tree to indicate to the server that they are interested in txid
   values below that point of the data tree.

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        Client                                            Server
          |                                                 |
          |   ------------------------------------------>   |
          |   get-config (txid: ?)                          |
          |     acls                                        |
          |                                                 |
          |   <------------------------------------------   |
          |   data (txid: 5152)                             |
          |     acls (txid: 5152)                           |
          |       acl A1 (txid: 4711)                       |
          |         aces (txid: 4711)                       |
          |           ace R1 (txid: 4711)                   |
          |             matches ipv4 protocol 17            |
          |             actions forwarding accept           |
          |       acl A2 (txid: 5152)                       |
          |         aces (txid: 5152)                       |
          |           ace R7 (txid: 4711)                   |
          |             matches ipv4 dscp 10                |
          |             actions forwarding accept           |
          |           ace R8 (txid: 5152)                   |
          |             matches udp source-port port 22     |
          |             actions forwarding accept           |
          |           ace R9 (txid: 5152)                   |
          |             matches tcp source-port port 22     |
          |             actions forwarding accept           |
          v                                                 v

      Figure 1: Initial Configuration Retrieval.  The client annotated
      the get-config request itself with the txid request value, which
      makes the server return all txid values in the entire datastore,
       that also fall within the requested subtree filter.  The most
        recent change seems to have been an update to ace R8 and R9.

   In the call flow examples in this document we are using a 4-digit,
   monotonously increasing integer as txid.  This is convenient and
   enhances readability of the examples, but does not necessarily
   reflect a typical implementation.

   In principle, txid values are opaque strings that uniquely identify a
   particular configuration state.  Servers are expected to know which
   txid values it has used in the recent past, and in which order they
   were assigned to configuration change transactions.  This information
   is known as the server's Txid History.

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   How many historical txid values to track is up to each server
   implementor to decide, and a server MAY decide not to store any
   historical txid values at all.  The more txid values in the server's
   Txid History, the more efficient the client synchronization may be,
   as described in the coming sections.

   Some server implementors may decide to use a monotonically increasing
   integer as the txid value, or a timestamp.  Doing so obviously makes
   it very easy for the server to determine the sequence of historical
   transaction ids.

   Some server implementors may decide to use a completely different
   txid value sequence, to the point that the sequence may appear
   completely random to outside observers.  Clients MUST NOT generally
   assume that servers use a txid value scheme that reveals information
   about the temporal sequence of txid values.

3.4.  Subsequent Configuration Retrieval

   Clients MAY request the server to return txid values in the response
   by adding one or more txid values received previously in get-config
   or get-data requests.  Txid values sent by a client are often
   abbreviated c-txid.

   When a client sends in a c-txid value of a node that matches the
   server's s-txid value for that Versioned Node, or matches a more
   recent s-txid value in the server's Txid History, the server prunes
   (does not return) that subtree from the response.  Since the client
   already knows the txid for this part of the data tree, or a txid that
   occurred more recently, it is obviosuly already up to date with that
   part of the configuration.  Sending it again would be a waste of time
   and energy.

   The table below describes in detail how the client side (c-txid) and
   server side txid (s-txid) values are determined and compared when the
   server processes each data tree reply node from a get-config or get-
   data request.

   Servers MUST process each of the config true nodes as follows:

   +==========+===========================+============================+
   | Case     | Condition                 | Behavior                   |
   +==========+===========================+============================+
   | 1.  NO   | In its request, the       | In this case, the server   |
   | CLIENT   | client did not specify a  | MUST return the current    |
   | TXID     | c-txid value for the      | node according to the      |
   |          | current node, nor any     | normal NETCONF             |
   |          | ancestor of this node.    | specifications.  The       |

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   |          |                           | rules below do not apply   |
   |          |                           | to the current node.  Any  |
   |          |                           | child nodes MUST also be   |
   |          |                           | evaluated with respect to  |
   |          |                           | these rules.               |
   +----------+---------------------------+----------------------------+
   | 2.       | The client did not        | In this case, the current  |
   | CLIENT   | specify a c-txid value    | node MUST inherit the      |
   | ANCESTOR | for the current node, but | c-txid value of the        |
   | TXID     | did specify a c-txid      | closest ancestor node in   |
   |          | value for one or more     | the client's request that  |
   |          | ancestors of this node.   | has a c-txid value.        |
   |          |                           | Processing of the current  |
   |          |                           | node continues according   |
   |          |                           | to the rules below.        |
   +----------+---------------------------+----------------------------+
   | 3.       | The node is not a         | In this case, the current  |
   | SERVER   | Versioned Node, i.e. the  | node MUST inherit the      |
   | ANCESTOR | server does not maintain  | server's s-txid value of   |
   | TXID     | a s-txid value for this   | the closest ancestor that  |
   |          | node.                     | is a Versioned Node (has   |
   |          |                           | a server side s-txid       |
   |          |                           | value).  The datastore     |
   |          |                           | root is always a           |
   |          |                           | Versioned Node.            |
   |          |                           | Processing of the current  |
   |          |                           | node continues according   |
   |          |                           | to the rules below.        |
   +----------+---------------------------+----------------------------+
   | 4.       | The client specified      | In this case the server    |
   | CLIENT   | c-txid for the current    | MUST return the node       |
   | TXID UP  | node value is "up to      | decorated with a special   |
   | TO DATE  | date", i.e. it matches    | "txid-match" txid value    |
   |          | the server's s-txid       | (e.g. "=") to the          |
   |          | value, or matches a       | matching node, pruning     |
   |          | s-txid value from the     | any value and child        |
   |          | server's Txid History     | nodes.                     |
   |          | that is more recent than  |                            |
   |          | the server's s-txid value |                            |
   |          | for this node.            |                            |
   +----------+---------------------------+----------------------------+
   | 5.       | The specified c-txid is   | In this case the server    |
   | CLIENT   | "outdated" or "unknown"   | MUST return the current    |
   | TXID OUT | to the server, i.e. it    | node according to the      |
   | OF DATE  | does not match the        | normal NETCONF             |
   |          | server's s-txid value for | specifications.  If the    |
   |          | this node, nor does the   | current node is a          |
   |          | client c-txid value match | Versioned Node, it MUST    |

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   |          | any s-txid value in the   | be decorated with the      |
   |          | server's Txid History     | s-txid value.  Any child   |
   |          | that is more recent than  | nodes MUST also be         |
   |          | the server's s-txid value | evaluated with respect to  |
   |          | for this node.            | these rules.               |
   +----------+---------------------------+----------------------------+

               Table 1: The Txid rules for response pruning.

   For list elements, pruning child nodes means that top-level key nodes
   MUST be included in the response, and other child nodes MUST NOT be
   included.  For containers, child nodes MUST NOT be included.

   Here follows a couple of examples of how the rules above are applied.
   See the example above (Figure 1) for the most recent server
   configuration state that the client is aware of, before this happens:

        Client                                            Server
          |                                                 |
          |   ------------------------------------------>   |
          |   get-config                                    |
          |     acls (txid: 5152)                           |
          |       acl A1 (txid: 4711)                       |
          |         aces (txid: 4711)                       |
          |       acl A2 (txid: 5152)                       |
          |         aces (txid: 5152)                       |
          |                                                 |
          |   <------------------------------------------   |
          |   data                                          |
          |     acls (txid: =)                              |
          v                                                 v

     Figure 2: Response Pruning.  Client sends get-config request with
        known txid values.  Server prunes response where the c-txid
      matches expectations.  In this case, the server had no changes,
        and pruned the response at the earliest point offered by the
                                  client.

   In this case, the server's txid-based pruning saved a substantial
   amount of information that is already known by the client to be sent
   to and processed by the client.

   In the following example someone has made a change to the
   configuration on the server.  This server has chosen to implement a
   Txid History with up to 5 entries.  The 5 most recently used s-txid
   values on this example server are currently: 4711, 5152, 5550, 6614,
   7770 (most recent).  Then a client sends this request:

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        Client                                            Server
          |                                                 |
          |   ------------------------------------------>   |
          |   get-config                                    |
          |     acls (txid: 5152)                           |
          |       acl A1 (txid: 4711)                       |
          |       acl A2 (txid: 5152)                       |
          |                                                 |
          |   <------------------------------------------   |
          |   data                                          |
          |     acls (txid: 6614)                           |
          |       acl A1 (txid: =)                          |
          |       acl A2 (txid: 6614)                       |
          |         aces (txid: 6614)                       |
          |           ace R7 (txid: =)                      |
          |           ace R8 (txid: =)                      |
          |           ace R9 (txid: 6614)                   |
          |             matches tcp source-port port 830    |
          |             actions forwarding accept           |
          v                                                 v

      Figure 3: Out of band change detected.  Client sends get-config
       request with known txid values.  Server provides updates only
                        where changes have happened.

   In the example above, the server returns the acls container because
   the client supplied c-txid value (5152) differs from the s-txid value
   held by the server (6614), and 5152 is less recent in the server's
   Txid History than 6614.  The client is apparently unaware of the
   latest config developments in this part of the server config tree.

   The server prunes list entry acl A1 is because it has the same s-txid
   value as the c-txid supplied by the client (4711).  The server
   returns the list entry acl A2 because 5152 (specified by the client)
   is less recent than 6614 (held by the server).

   The container aces under acl A2 is returned because 5152 is less
   recent than 6614.  The server prunes ace R7 because the c-txid for
   this node is 5152 (from acl A2), and 5152 is more recent than the
   closest ancestor Versioned Node (with txid 4711).

   The server also prunes acl R8 because the server and client txids
   exactly match (5152).  Finally, acl R9 is returned because of its
   less recent c-txid value given by the client (5152, on the closest
   ancestor acl A2) than the s-txid held on the server (6614).

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   In the next example, the client specifies the c-txid for a node that
   the server does not maintain a s-txid for, i.e. it's not a Versioned
   Node.

        Client                                            Server
          |                                                 |
          |   ------------------------------------------>   |
          |   get-config                                    |
          |     acls                                        |
          |       acls A2                                   |
          |         aces                                    |
          |           ace R7                                |
          |             matches                             |
          |               ipv4                              |
          |                 dscp (txid: 4711)               |
          |                                                 |
          |   <------------------------------------------   |
          |   data                                          |
          |     acls                                        |
          |       acl A2                                    |
          |         aces                                    |
          |           ace R7                                |
          |             matches                             |
          |               ipv4                              |
          |                 dscp (txid: =)                  |
          v                                                 v

        Figure 4: Versioned Nodes.  Server lookup of dscp txid gives
       4711, as closest ancestor is ace R7 with txid 4711.  Since the
      server's and client's txid match, the etag value is '=', and the
                           leaf value is pruned.

   Here, the server looks up the closest ancestor node that is a
   Versioned Node.  This particular server has chosen to keep a s-txid
   for the list entry ace R7, but not for any of its children.  Thus the
   server finds the server side s-txid value to be 4711 (from ace R7),
   which matches the client's c-txid value of 4711.

   Servers MUST NOT ever use the special txid values, txid-match, txid-
   request, txid-unknown (e.g. "=", "?", "!") as actual txid values.

3.5.  Candidate Datastore Configuration Retrieval

   When a client retrieves the configuration from the (or a) candidate
   datastore, some of the configuration nodes may hold the same data as
   the corresponding node in the running datastore.  In such cases, the
   server MUST return the same s-txid value for nodes in the candidate
   datastore as in the running datastore.

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   If a node in the candidate datastore holds different data than in the
   running datastore, the server has a choice of what to return.

   *  The server MAY return a txid-unknown value (e.g. "!").  This may
      be convenient in servers that do not know a priori what txids will
      be used in a future, possible commit of the canidate.

   *  If the txid-unknown value is not returned, the server MUST return
      the s-txid value the node will have after commit, assuming the
      client makes no further changes of the candidate datastore.  If a
      client makes further changes in the candidate datastore, the
      s-txid value MAY change.

   See the example in Candidate Datastore Transactions (Section 3.7).

3.6.  Conditional Transactions

   Conditional transactions are useful when a client is interested to
   make a configuration change, being sure that relevant parts of the
   server configuration have not changed since the client last inspected
   it.

   By supplying the latest c-txid values known to the client in its
   change requests (edit-config etc.), it can request the server to
   reject the transaction in case any relevant changes have occurred at
   the server that the client is not yet aware of.

   This allows a client to reliably compute and send configuration
   changes to a server without either acquiring a global datastore lock
   for a potentially extended period of time, or risk that a change from
   another client disrupts the intent in the time window between a read
   (get-config etc.) and write (edit-config etc.) operation.

   Clients that are also interested to know the s-txid assigned to the
   modified Versioned Nodes in the model immediately in the response
   could set a flag in the rpc message to request the server to return
   the new s-txid with the ok message.

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        Client                                            Server
          |                                                 |
          |   ------------------------------------------>   |
          |   edit-config (request new txid in response)    |
          |     config (txid: 5152)                         |
          |       acls (txid: 5152)                         |
          |         acl A1 (txid: 4711)                     |
          |           aces (txid: 4711)                     |
          |             ace R1 (txid: 4711)                 |
          |               matches ipv4 protocol 6           |
          |               actions forwarding accept         |
          |                                                 |
          |   <------------------------------------------   |
          |   ok (txid: 7688)                               |
          v                                                 v

      Figure 5: Conditional transaction towards the Running datastore
      successfully executed.  As all the txid values specified by the
          client matched those on the server, the transaction was
                           successfully executed.

   After the above edit-config, the client might issues a get-config to
   observe the change.  It would look like this:

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        Client                                            Server
          |                                                 |
          |   ------------------------------------------>   |
          |   get-config                                    |
          |     acls (txid: ?)                              |
          |                                                 |
          |   <------------------------------------------   |
          |   data                                          |
          |     acls (txid: 7688)                           |
          |       acl A1 (txid: 7688)                       |
          |         aces (txid: 7688)                       |
          |           ace R1 (txid: 7688)                   |
          |             matches ipv4 protocol 6             |
          |             actions forwarding accept           |
          |       acl A2 (txid: 6614)                       |
          |         aces (txid: 6614)                       |
          |           ace R7 (txid: 4711)                   |
          |             matches ipv4 dscp 10                |
          |             actions forwarding accept           |
          |           ace R8 (txid: 5152)                   |
          |             matches udp source-port port 22     |
          |             actions forwarding accept           |
          |           ace R9 (txid: 6614)                   |
          |             matches tcp source-port port 830    |
          |             actions forwarding accept           |
          v                                                 v

      Figure 6: The txids are updated on all Versioned Nodes that were
        modified themselves or have a child node that was modified.

   When a client sends in a c-txid value of a node, the server MUST
   consider it a match if the server's s-txid value is identical to the
   client, or if the server's value is found earlier in the server's
   Txid History than the value supplied by the client.

3.6.1.  Error response on Out of band change

   If the server rejects the transaction because one or more of the
   configuration s-txid value(s) differs from the client's expectation,
   the server MUST return at least one rpc-error with the following
   values:

      error-tag:      operation-failed
      error-type:     protocol
      error-severity: error

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   Additionally, the error-info tag MUST contain an sx:structure
   containing relevant details about one of the mismatching txids.  A
   server MAY send multiple rpc-errors when multiple txid mismatches are
   detected.

        Client                                            Server
          |                                                 |
          |   ------------------------------------------>   |
          |   edit-config                                   |
          |     config                                      |
          |       acls                                      |
          |         acl A1 (txid: 4711)                     |
          |           aces (txid: 4711)                     |
          |             ace R1 (txid: 4711)                 |
          |               matches ipv4 dscp 20              |
          |               actions forwarding accept         |
          |                                                 |
          |   <------------------------------------------   |
          |   rpc-error                                     |
          |     error-tag       operation-failed            |
          |     error-type      protocol                    |
          |     error-severity  error                       |
          |     error-info                                  |
          |       mismatch-path /acls/acl[A1]               |
          |       mismatch-etag-value 6912                  |
          v                                                 v

      Figure 7: Conditional transaction that fails a txid check.  The
          client wishes to ensure there has been no changes to the
      particular acl entry it edits, and therefore sends the c-txid it
      knows for this part of the configuration.  Since the s-txid has
        changed (out of band), the server rejects the configuration
      change request and reports an error with details about where the
                           mismatch was detected.

3.6.2.  Txid History size consideration

   It may be tempting for a client implementor to send only the top
   level c-txid value for the tree being edited.  In most cases, that
   would certainly work just fine.  This is a way for the client to
   request the server to go ahead with the change as long as there has
   not been any changes more recent than the client provided c-txid.

   Here the client is sending the same change as in the example above
   (Figure 5), but with only one top level c-txid value.

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        Client                                            Server
          |                                                 |
          |   ------------------------------------------>   |
          |   edit-config (request new txid in response)    |
          |     config (txid: 5152)                         |
          |       acls                                      |
          |         acl A1                                  |
          |           aces                                  |
          |             ace R1                              |
          |               matches ipv4 protocol 6           |
          |               actions forwarding accept         |
          |                                                 |
          |   <------------------------------------------   |
          |   ok (txid: 7688)                               |
          v                                                 v

      Figure 8: Conditional transaction towards the Running datastore
     successfully executed.  As all the c-txid values specified by the
     client were the same or more recent in the server's Txid History,
               so the transaction was successfully executed.

   This approach works well because the top level value is inherited
   down in the child nodes and the server finds this value to either
   match exactly or be a more recent s-txid value in the server's Txid
   History.

   The only caveat is that by relying on the server's Txid History being
   long enough, the change could be rejected if the top level c-txid has
   fallen out of the server's Txid History.  Some servers may have a
   Txid History size of zero.  A client specifying a single top-level
   c-txid value towards such a server would not be able to get the
   transaction accepted.

3.7.  Candidate Datastore Transactions

   When working with the (or a) Candidate datastore, the txid validation
   happens at commit time, rather than at individual edit-config or
   edit-data operations.  Clients add their c-txid attributes to the
   configuration payload the same way.  In case a client specifies
   different c-txid values for the same element in successive edit-
   config or edit-data operations, the c-txid value specified last MUST
   be used by the server at commit time.

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        Client                                            Server
          |                                                 |
          |   ------------------------------------------>   |
          |   edit-config (operation: merge)                |
          |     config (txid: 5152)                         |
          |       acls (txid: 5152)                         |
          |         acl A1 (txid: 4711)                     |
          |           type ipv4                             |
          |                                                 |
          |   <------------------------------------------   |
          |   ok                                            |
          |                                                 |
          |   ------------------------------------------>   |
          |   edit-config (operation: merge)                |
          |     config                                      |
          |       acls                                      |
          |         acl A1                                  |
          |           aces (txid: 4711)                     |
          |             ace R1 (txid: 4711)                 |
          |               matches ipv4 protocol 6           |
          |               actions forwarding accept         |
          |                                                 |
          |   <------------------------------------------   |
          |   ok                                            |
          |                                                 |
          |   ------------------------------------------>   |
          |   get-config                                    |
          |     config                                      |
          |       acls                                      |
          |         acl A1                                  |
          |           aces (txid: ?)                        |
          |                                                 |
          |   <------------------------------------------   |
          |     config                                      |
          |       acls                                      |
          |         acl A1                                  |
          |           aces (txid: 7688  or !)               |
          |             ace R1 (txid: 7688 or !)            |
          |               matches ipv4 protocol 6           |
          |               actions forwarding accept         |
          |             ace R2 (txid: 2219)                 |
          |               matches ipv4 dscp 21              |
          |               actions forwarding accept         |
          |                                                 |
          |   ------------------------------------------>   |
          |   commit (request new txid in response)         |
          |                                                 |
          |   <------------------------------------------   |

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          |   ok (txid: 7688)                               |
          v                                                 v

     Figure 9: Conditional transaction towards the Candidate datastore
     successfully executed.  As all the c-txid values specified by the
     client matched those on the server at the time of the commit, the
     transaction was successfully executed.  If a client issues a get-
      config towards the candidate datastore, the server may choose to
       return the special txid-unknown value (e.g. "!") or the s-txid
      value that would be used if the candidate was committed without
       further changes (when that s-txid value is known in advance by
                                the server).

3.8.  Dependencies within Transactions

   YANG modules that contain when-statements referencing remote parts of
   the model will cause the s-txid to change even in parts of the data
   tree that were not modified directly.

   Let's say there is an energy-example.yang module that defines a
   mechanism for clients to request the server to measure the amount of
   energy that is consumed by a given access control rule.  The energy-
   example module augments the access control module as follows:

   module energy-example {
   ...

     container energy {
       leaf metering-enabled {
         type boolean;
         default false;
       }
     }

     augment /acl:acls/acl:acl {
       when /energy-example:energy/energy-example:metering-enabled;
       leaf energy-tracing {
         type boolean;
         default false;
       }
       leaf energy-consumption {
         config false;
         type uint64;
         units J;
       }
     }
   }

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   This means there is a system wide switch leaf metering-enabled in
   energy-example which disables all energy measurements in the system
   when set to false, and that there is a boolean leaf energy-tracing
   that controls whether energy measurement is happening for each acl
   rule individually.

   In this example, we have an initial configuration like this:

        Client                                            Server
          |                                                 |
          |   ------------------------------------------>   |
          |   get-config                                    |
          |     energy (txid: ?)                            |
          |     acls (txid: ?)                              |
          |                                                 |
          |   <------------------------------------------   |
          |   data (txid: 7688)                             |
          |     energy metering-enabled true (txid: 4711)   |
          |     acls (txid: 7688)                           |
          |       acl A1 (txid: 7688)                       |
          |         energy-tracing false                    |
          |         aces (txid: 7688)                       |
          |           ace R1 (txid: 7688)                   |
          |             matches ipv4 protocol 6             |
          |             actions forwarding accept           |
          |       acl A2 (txid: 6614)                       |
          |         energy-tracing true                     |
          |         aces (txid: 6614)                       |
          |           ace R7 (txid: 4711)                   |
          |             matches ipv4 dscp 10                |
          |             actions forwarding accept           |
          |           ace R8 (txid: 5152)                   |
          |             matches udp source-port port 22     |
          |             actions forwarding accept           |
          |           ace R9 (txid: 6614)                   |
          |             matches tcp source-port port 830    |
          |             actions forwarding accept           |
          v                                                 v

       Figure 10: Initial configuration for the energy example.  Note
       the energy metering-enabled leaf at the top and energy-tracing
                           leafs under each acl.

   At this point, a client updates metering-enabled to false.  This
   causes the when-expression on energy-tracing to turn false, removing
   the leaf entirely.  This counts as a configuration change, and the
   s-txid MUST be updated appropriately.

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        Client                                            Server
          |                                                 |
          |   ------------------------------------------>   |
          |   edit-config (request new txid in response)    |
          |     config                                      |
          |       energy metering-enabled false             |
          |                                                 |
          |   <------------------------------------------   |
          |   ok (txid: 9118)                               |
          v                                                 v

      Figure 11: Transaction changing a single leaf.  This leaf is the
        target of a when-statement, however, which means other leafs
         elsewhere may be indirectly modified by this change.  Such
            indirect changes will also result in s-txid changes.

   After the transaction above, the new configuration state has the
   energy-tracing leafs removed.  Every such removal or (re)introduction
   of a node counts as a configuration change from a txid perspective,
   regardless of whether the change has any net configuration change
   effect in the server.

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        Client                                            Server
          |                                                 |
          |   ------------------------------------------>   |
          |   get-config                                    |
          |     energy (txid: ?)                            |
          |     acls (txid: ?)                              |
          |                                                 |
          |   <------------------------------------------   |
          |   data (txid: 9118)                             |
          |     energy metering-enabled false (txid: 9118)  |
          |     acls (txid: 9118)                           |
          |       acl A1 (txid: 9118)                       |
          |         aces (txid: 7688)                       |
          |           ace R1 (txid: 7688)                   |
          |             matches ipv4 protocol 6             |
          |             actions forwarding accept           |
          |       acl A2 (txid: 9118)                       |
          |         aces (txid: 6614)                       |
          |           ace R7 (txid: 4711)                   |
          |             matches ipv4 dscp 10                |
          |             actions forwarding accept           |
          |           ace R8 (txid: 5152)                   |
          |             matches udp source-port port 22     |
          |             actions forwarding accept           |
          |           ace R9 (txid: 6614)                   |
          |             matches tcp source-port port 830    |
          |             actions forwarding accept           |
          v                                                 v

     Figure 12: The txid for the energy subtree has changed since that
       was the target of the edit-config.  The txids of the ACLs have
       also changed since the energy-tracing leafs are now removed by
        the now false when- expression.  Both acl A1 and acl A2 have
     their txids updated, even though energy-tracing was already false
                                for acl A1.

3.9.  Other NETCONF Operations

   discard-changes  The discard-changes operation resets the candidate
      datastore to the contents of the running datastore.  The server
      MUST ensure the txid values in the candidate datastore get the
      same txid values as in the running datastore when this operation
      runs.

   copy-config  The copy-config operation can be used to copy contents
      between datastores.  The server MUST ensure the txid values are
      retained and changed as if the data being copied had been sent in
      through an edit-config operation.

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   delete-config  The server MUST ensure the datastore txid value is
      changed, unless it was already empty.

   commit  At commit, with regards to the txid values, the server MUST
      treat the contents of the candidate datastore as if any txid value
      provided by the client when updating the candidate was provided in
      a single edit-config towards the running datastore.  If the
      transaction is rejected due to txid value mismatch, an rpc-error
      as described in section Conditional Transactions (Section 3.6)
      MUST be sent.

3.10.  YANG-Push Subscriptions

   A client issuing a YANG-Push establish-subscription or modify-
   subscription request towards a server that supports ietf-netconf-
   txid-yang-push.yang MAY request that the server provides updated txid
   values in YANG-Push on-change subscription updates.

   This functionality pertains only to on-change updates.  This RPC may
   also be invoked over RESTCONF or other protocols, and might therefore
   be encoded in JSON.

   To request txid values (e.g. etag), the client adds a flag in the
   request (e.g. with-etag).  The server then returns the txid (e.g.
   etag) value in the yang-patch payload (e.g. as etag-value).

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        Client                                            Server
          |                                                 |
          |   ------------------------------------------>   |
          |   rpc                                           |
          |     establish-subscription                      |
          |       datastore running                         |
          |       datastore-xpath-filter /acls              |
          |       on-change                                 |
          |       with-etag true                            |
          |                                                 |
          |   <------------------------------------------   |
          |   ok                                            |
          |                                                 |
          |   <------------------------------------------   |
          |   notification                                  |
          |     eventTime 2022-04-04T06:00:24.16Z           |
          |     push-change-update                          |
          |       id 89                                     |
          |       datastore-changes                         |
          |         yang-patch                              |
          |           patch-id 0                            |
          |           edit                                  |
          |             edit-id edit1                       |
          |             operation delete                    |
          |             target /acls/acl[A1]                |
          |           edit                                  |
          |             edit-id edit2                       |
          |             operation merge                     |
          |             target /acls/acl[A2]/ace[R7]        |
          |               value                             |
          |                 matches ipv4 dscp 10            |
          |                 actions forwarding accept       |
          |           etag-value 8008                       |
          |                                                 |
          v                                                 v

     Figure 13: A client requests a YANG-Push subscription for a given
      path with txid value included.  When the server delivers a push-
        change-update notification, the txid value pertaining to the
                         entire patch is included.

3.11.  Comparing YANG Datastores

   A client issuing an NMDA Datastore compare request towards a server
   that supports ietf-netconf-txid-nmda-compare.yang MAY request that
   the server provides updated txid values in the compare reply.
   Besides NETCONF, this RPC may also be invoked over RESTCONF or other
   protocols, and might therefore be encoded in JSON.

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   To request txid values (e.g. etag), the client adds a flag in the
   request (e.g. with-etag).  The server then returns the txid (e.g.
   etag) value in the yang-patch payload (e.g. as etag-value).

   The txid value returned by the server MUST be the txid value
   pertaining to the target node in the source or target datastores that
   is the most recent.  If one of the datastores being compared is not a
   configuration datastore, the txid in the configuration datastore MUST
   be used.  If none of the datastores being compared are a
   configuration datastore, then txid values MUST NOT be returned at
   all.

   The txid to return is the one that pertains to the target node, or in
   the case of delete, the closest surviving ancestor of the target
   node.

        Client                                            Server
          |                                                 |
          |   ------------------------------------------>   |
          |   rpc                                           |
          |     compare                                     |
          |       source ds:running                         |
          |       target ds:operational                     |
          |       with-etag true                            |
          |                                                 |
          |   <------------------------------------------   |
          |   differences                                   |
          |     yang-patch                                  |
          |       patch-id 0                                |
          |       edit                                      |
          |         edit-id edit1                           |
          |         operation delete                        |
          |         target /acls/acl[A1]                    |
          |         etag-value 8008                         |
          |       edit                                      |
          |         edit-id edit2                           |
          |         operation merge                         |
          |         target /acls/acl[A2]/ace[R7]            |
          |           value                                 |
          |             matches ipv4 dscp 10                |
          |             actions forwarding accept           |
          |         etag-value 8008                         |
          |                                                 |
          v                                                 v

     Figure 14: A client requests a NMDA Datastore compare for a given
       path with txid values included.  When the server delivers the
                 reply, the txid is included for each edit.

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4.  Txid Mechanisms

   This document defines two txid mechanisms:

   *  The etag attribute txid mechanism

   *  The last-modified attribute txid mechanism

   Servers implementing this specification MUST support the etag
   attribute txid mechanism and MAY support the last-modified attribute
   txid mechanism.

   Section NETCONF Txid Extension (Section 3) describes the logic that
   governs all txid mechanisms.  This section describes the mapping from
   the generic logic to specific mechanism and encoding.

   If a client uses more than one txid mechanism, such as both etag and
   last-modified in a particular message to a server, or patricular
   commit, the result is undefined.

4.1.  The etag attribute txid mechanism

   The etag txid mechanism described in this section is centered around
   a meta data XML attribute called "etag".  The etag attribute is
   defined in the namespace "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:txid:1.0".
   The etag attribute is added to XML elements in the NETCONF payload in
   order to indicate the txid value for the YANG node represented by the
   element.

   NETCONF servers that support this extension MUST announce the
   capability "urn:ietf:params:netconf:capability:txid:etag:1.0".

   The etag attribute values are opaque strings chosen freely.  They
   MUST consist of ASCII printable characters (VCHAR), except that the
   etag string MUST NOT contain space, backslash or double quotes.  The
   point of these restrictions is to make it easy to reuse
   implementations that adhere to section 2.3.1 in [RFC7232].  The
   probability SHOULD be made very low that an etag value that has been
   used historically by a server is used again by that server if the
   configuration is different.

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   It is RECOMMENDED that the same etag txid values are used across all
   management interfaces (i.e.  NETCONF, RESTCONF and any other the
   server might implement), if it implements more than one.  It is
   RECOMMENDED that the etag txid has an encoding specific suffix,
   especially when it is not encoded in XML.  E.g. a response encoded in
   JSON might append "+json" at the end of the etag value.  This is in
   line with the language in [RFC7232] and traditions in the HTTP world
   at large.

   The detailed rules for when to update the etag value are described in
   section General Txid Principles (Section 3.2).  These rules are
   chosen to be consistent with the ETag mechanism in RESTCONF,
   [RFC8040], specifically sections 3.4.1.2, 3.4.1.3 and 3.5.2.

4.2.  The last-modified attribute txid mechanism

   The last-modified txid mechanism described in this section is
   centered around a meta data XML attribute called "last-modified".
   The last-modified attribute is defined in the namespace
   "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:txid:1.0".  The last-modified
   attribute is added to XML elements in the NETCONF payload in order to
   indicate the txid value for the YANG node represented by the element.

   NETCONF servers that support this extension MUST announce the feature
   last-modified defined in ietf-netconf-txid.yang.

   The last-modified attribute values are yang:date-and-time values as
   defined in ietf-yang-types.yang, [RFC6991].

   "2022-04-01T12:34:56.123456Z" is an example of what this time stamp
   format looks like.  It is RECOMMENDED that the time stamps provided
   by the server closely match the real world clock.  Servers MUST
   ensure the timestamps provided are monotonously increasing for as
   long as the server's operation is maintained.

   It is RECOMMENDED that server implementors choose the number of
   digits of precision used for the fractional second timestamps high
   enough so that there is no risk that multiple transactions on the
   server would get the same timestamp.

   It is RECOMMENDED that the same last-modified txid values are used
   across all management interfaces (i.e.  NETCONF and any other the
   server might implement), except RESTCONF.

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   RESTCONF, as defined in [RFC8040], is using a different format for
   the time stamps which is limited to one second resolution.  Server
   implementors that support the Last-Modified txid mechanism over both
   RESTCONF and other management protocols are RECOMMENDED to use Last-
   Modified timestamps that match the point in time referenced over
   RESTCONF, with the fractional seconds part added.

   The detailed rules for when to update the last-modified value are
   described in section General Txid Principles (Section 3.2).  These
   rules are chosen to be consistent with the Last-Modified mechanism in
   RESTCONF, [RFC8040], specifically sections 3.4.1.1, 3.4.1.3 and
   3.5.1.

4.3.  Common features to both etag and last-modified txid mechanisms

   Clients MAY add etag or last-modified attributes to zero or more
   individual elements in the get-config or get-data filter, in which
   case they pertain to the subtree(s) rooted at the element(s) with the
   attributes.

   Clients MAY also add such attributes directly to the get-config or
   get-data tags (e.g. if there is no filter), in which case it pertains
   to the txid value of the datastore root.

   Clients might wish to send a txid value that is guaranteed to never
   match a server constructed txid.  With both the etag and last-
   modified txid mechanisms, such a txid-request value is "?".

   Clients MAY add etag or last-modified attributes to the payload of
   edit-config or edit-data requests, in which case they indicate the
   client's txid value of that element.

   Clients MAY request servers that also implement YANG-Push to return
   configuration change subsription updates with etag or last-modified
   txid attributes.  The client requests this service by adding a with-
   etag or with-last-modified flag with the value 'true' to the
   subscription request or yang-push configuration.  The server MUST
   then return such txids on the YANG Patch edit tag and to the child
   elements of the value tag.  The txid attribute on the edit tag
   reflects the txid associated with the changes encoded in this edit
   section, as well as parent nodes.  Later edit sections in the same
   push-update or push-change-update may still supercede the txid value
   for some or all of the nodes in the current edit section.

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   Servers returning txid values in get-config, edit-config, get-data,
   edit-data and commit operations MUST do so by adding etag and/or
   last-modified txid attributes to the data and ok tags.  When servers
   prune output due to a matching txid value, the server MUST add a
   txid-match attribute to the pruned element, and MUST set the
   attribute value to "=", and MUST NOT send any element value.

   Servers returning a txid mismatch error MUST return an rpc-error as
   defined in section Conditional Transactions (Section 3.6) with an
   error-info tag containing a txid-value-mismatch-error-info structure.

4.3.1.  Candidate Datastore

   When servers return txid values in get-config and get-data operations
   towards the candidate datastore, the txid values returned MUST adhere
   to the following rules:

   *  If the versioned node holds the same data as in the running
      datastore, the same txid value as the versioned node in running
      MUST be used.

   *  If the versioned node is different in the candidate store than in
      the running datastore, the server has a choice of what to return.
      The server MAY return the special "txid-unknown" value "!".  If
      the txid-unknown value is not returned, the server MUST return the
      txid value the versioned node will have if the client decides to
      commit the candidate datastore without further updates.

4.3.2.  Namespaces and Attribute Placement

   The txid attributes are valid on the following NETCONF tags, where
   xmlns:nc="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0",
   xmlns:ncds="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-netconf-nmda",
   xmlns:sn="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-subscribed-notifications",
   xmlns:yp="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-yang-push" and
   xmlns:ypatch="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-yang-patch":

   In client messages sent to a server:

   *  /nc:rpc/nc:get-config

   *  /nc:rpc/nc:get-config/nc:filter//*

   *  /nc:rpc/ncds:get-data

   *  /nc:rpc/ncds:get-data/ncds:subtree-filter//*

   *  /nc:rpc/ncds:get-data/ncds:xpath-filter//*

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   *  /nc:rpc/nc:edit-config/nc:config

   *  /nc:rpc/nc:edit-config/nc:config//*

   *  /nc:rpc/ncds:edit-data/ncds:config

   *  /nc:rpc/ncds:edit-data/ncds:config//*

   In server messages sent to a client:

   *  /nc:rpc-reply/nc:data

   *  /nc:rpc-reply/nc:data//*

   *  /nc:rpc-reply/ncds:data

   *  /nc:rpc-reply/ncds:data//*

   *  /nc:rpc-reply/nc:ok

   *  /yp:push-update/yp:datastore-contents/ypatch:yang-patch/
      ypatch:edit

   *  /yp:push-update/yp:datastore-contents/ypatch:yang-patch/
      ypatch:edit/ypatch:value//*

   *  /yp:push-change-update/yp:datastore-contents/ypatch:yang-patch/
      ypatch:edit

   *  /yp:push-change-update/yp:datastore-contents/ypatch:yang-patch/
      ypatch:edit/ypatch:value//*

5.  Txid Mechanism Examples

5.1.  Initial Configuration Response

5.1.1.  With etag

   NOTE: In the etag examples below, we have chosen to use a txid value
   consisting of "nc" followed by a monotonously increasing integer.
   This is convenient for the reader trying to make sense of the
   examples, but is not an implementation requirement.  An etag would
   often be implemented as a "random" string of characters.

   To retrieve etag attributes across the entire NETCONF server
   configuration, a client might send:

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   <rpc xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0" message-id="1"
        xmlns:txid="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:txid:1.0">
     <get-config txid:etag="?"/>
   </rpc>

   The server's reply might then be:

   <rpc-reply message-id="1"
              xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0"
              xmlns:txid="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:txid:1.0">
     <data txid:etag="nc5152">
       <acls xmlns=
               "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list"
             txid:etag="nc5152">
         <acl txid:etag="nc4711">
           <name>A1</name>
           <aces txid:etag="nc4711">
             <ace txid:etag="nc4711">
               <name>R1</name>
               <matches>
                 <ipv4>
                   <protocol>17</protocol>
                 </ipv4>
               </matches>
               <actions>
                 <forwarding xmlns:acl=
                 "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">
                   acl:accept
                 <forwarding>
               </actions>
             </ace>
           </aces>
         </acl>
         <acl txid:etag="nc5152">
           <name>A2</name>
           <aces txid:etag="nc5152">
             <ace txid:etag="nc4711">
               <name>R7</name>
               <matches>
                 <ipv4>
                   <dscp>10</dscp>
                 </ipv4>
               </matches>
               <actions>
                 <forwarding xmlns:acl=
                 "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">
                   acl:accept
                 <forwarding>

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               </actions>
             </ace>
             <ace txid:etag="nc5152">
               <name>R8</name>
               <matches>
                 <udp>
                   <source-port>
                     <port>22</port>
                   </source-port>
                 </udp>
               </matches>
               <actions>
                 <forwarding xmlns:acl=
                 "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">
                   acl:accept
                 <forwarding>
               </actions>
             </ace>
             <ace txid:etag="nc5152">
               <name>R9</name>
               <matches>
                 <tcp>
                   <source-port>
                     <port>22</port>
                   </source-port>
                 </tcp>
               </matches>
               <actions>
                 <forwarding xmlns:acl=
                 "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">
                   acl:accept
                 <forwarding>
               </actions>
             </ace>
           </aces>
         </acl>
       </acls>
       <nacm xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-netconf-acm"
             txid:etag="nc3072">
         <groups txid:etag="nc3072">
           <group txid:etag="nc3072">
             <name>admin</name>
             <user-name>sakura</user-name>
             <user-name>joe</user-name>
           </group>
         </groups>
       </nacm>
     </data>

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   </rpc>

   To retrieve etag attributes for a specific ACL using an xpath filter,
   a client might send:

   <rpc xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0" message-id="2"
        xmlns:txid="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:txid:1.0">
     <get-config>
       <source>
         <running/>
       </source>
       <filter type="xpath"
         xmlns:acl=
           "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list"
         select="/acl:acls/acl:acl[acl:name='A1']"
         txid:etag="?"/>
     </get-config>
   </rpc>

   To retrieve etag attributes for "acls", but not for "nacm", a client
   might send:

   <rpc xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0" message-id="3"
        xmlns:txid="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:txid:1.0">
     <get-config>
       <source>
         <running/>
       </source>
       <filter>
         <acls
           xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list"
           txid:etag="?"/>
         <nacm xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-netconf-acm"/>
       </filter>
     </get-config>
   </rpc>

   If the server considers "acls", "acl", "aces" and "acl" to be
   Versioned Nodes, the server's response to the request above might
   look like:

   <rpc-reply message-id="3"
              xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0"
              xmlns:txid="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:txid:1.0">
     <data>
       <acls xmlns=
               "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list"
             txid:etag="nc5152">

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         <acl txid:etag="nc4711">
           <name>A1</name>
           <aces txid:etag="nc4711">
             <ace txid:etag="nc4711">
               <name>R1</name>
               <matches>
                 <ipv4>
                   <protocol>17</protocol>
                 </ipv4>
               </matches>
               <actions>
                 <forwarding xmlns:acl=
                 "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">
                   acl:accept
                 <forwarding>
               </actions>
             </ace>
           </aces>
         </acl>
         <acl txid:etag="nc5152">
           <name>A2</name>
           <aces txid:etag="nc5152">
             <ace txid:etag="nc4711">
               <name>R7</name>
               <matches>
                 <ipv4>
                   <dscp>10</dscp>
                 </ipv4>
               </matches>
               <actions>
                 <forwarding xmlns:acl=
                 "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">
                   acl:accept
                 <forwarding>
               </actions>
             </ace>
             <ace txid:etag="nc5152">
               <name>R8</name>
               <matches>
                 <udp>
                   <source-port>
                     <port>22</port>
                   </source-port>
                 </udp>
               </matches>
               <actions>
                 <forwarding xmlns:acl=
                 "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">

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                   acl:accept
                 <forwarding>
               </actions>
             </ace>
             <ace txid:etag="nc5152">
               <name>R9</name>
               <matches>
                 <tcp>
                   <source-port>
                     <port>22</port>
                   </source-port>
                 </tcp>
               </matches>
               <actions>
                 <forwarding xmlns:acl=
                 "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">
                   acl:accept
                 <forwarding>
               </actions>
             </ace>
           </aces>
         </acl>
       </acls>
       <nacm xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-netconf-acm"/>
         <groups>
           <group>
             <name>admin</name>
             <user-name>sakura</user-name>
             <user-name>joe</user-name>
           </group>
         </groups>
       </nacm>
     </data>
   </rpc>

5.1.2.  With last-modified

   To retrieve last-modified attributes for "acls", but not for "nacm",
   a client might send:

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   <rpc xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0" message-id="4"
        xmlns:txid="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:txid:1.0">
     <get-config>
       <source>
         <running/>
       </source>
       <filter>
         <acls
           xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list"
           txid:last-modified="?"/>
         <nacm xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-netconf-acm"/>
       </filter>
     </get-config>
   </rpc>

   If the server considers "acls", "acl", "aces" and "acl" to be
   Versioned Nodes, the server's response to the request above might
   look like:

   <rpc-reply message-id="4"
              xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0"
              xmlns:txid="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:txid:1.0">
     <data>
       <acls
         xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list"
         txid:last-modified="2022-04-01T12:34:56.789012Z">
         <acl txid:last-modified="2022-03-20T16:20:11.333444Z">
           <name>A1</name>
           <aces txid:last-modified="2022-03-20T16:20:11.333444Z">
             <ace txid:last-modified="2022-03-20T16:20:11.333444Z">
               <name>R1</name>
               <matches>
                 <ipv4>
                   <protocol>17</protocol>
                 </ipv4>
               </matches>
               <actions>
                 <forwarding xmlns:acl=
                 "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">
                   acl:accept
                 <forwarding>
               </actions>
             </ace>
           </aces>
         </acl>
         <acl txid:last-modified="2022-04-01T12:34:56.789012Z">
           <name>A2</name>
           <aces txid:last-modified="2022-04-01T12:34:56.789012Z">

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             <ace txid:last-modified="2022-03-20T16:20:11.333444Z">
               <name>R7</name>
               <matches>
                 <ipv4>
                   <dscp>10</dscp>
                 </ipv4>
               </matches>
               <actions>
                 <forwarding xmlns:acl=
                 "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">
                   acl:accept
                 <forwarding>
               </actions>
             </ace>
             <ace txid:last-modified="2022-04-01T12:34:56.789012Z">
               <name>R8</name>
               <matches>
                 <udp>
                   <source-port>
                     <port>22</port>
                   </source-port>
                 </udp>
               </matches>
               <actions>
                 <forwarding xmlns:acl=
                 "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">
                   acl:accept
                 <forwarding>
               </actions>
             </ace>
             <ace txid:last-modified="2022-04-01T12:34:56.789012Z">
               <name>R9</name>
               <matches>
                 <tcp>
                   <source-port>
                     <port>22</port>
                   </source-port>
                 </tcp>
               </matches>
               <actions>
                 <forwarding xmlns:acl=
                 "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">
                   acl:accept
                 <forwarding>
               </actions>
             </ace>
           </aces>
         </acl>

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       </acls>
       <nacm xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-netconf-acm"/>
         <groups>
           <group>
             <name>admin</name>
             <user-name>sakura</user-name>
             <user-name>joe</user-name>
           </group>
         </groups>
       </nacm>
     </data>
   </rpc>

5.2.  Configuration Response Pruning

   A NETCONF client that already knows some txid values MAY request that
   the configuration retrieval request is pruned with respect to the
   client's prior knowledge.

   To retrieve only changes for "acls" that do not have the last known
   etag txid value, a client might send:

   <rpc xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0" message-id="6"
        xmlns:txid="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:txid:1.0">
     <get-config>
       <source>
         <running/>
       </source>
       <filter>
         <acls
           xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list"
           txid:etag="nc5152">
           <acl txid:etag="nc4711">
             <name>A1</name>
             <aces txid:etag="nc4711"/>
           </acl>
           <acl txid:etag="nc5152">
             <name>A2</name>
             <aces txid:etag="nc5152"/>
           </acl>
       </filter>
     </get-config>
   </rpc>

   Assuming the NETCONF server configuration is the same as in the
   previous rpc-reply example, the server's response to request above
   might look like:

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   <rpc-reply message-id="6"
              xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0"
              xmlns:txid="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:txid:1.0">
     <data>
       <acls
         xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list"
         txid:etag="="/>
     </data>
   </rpc>

   Or, if a configuration change has taken place under /acls since the
   client was last updated, the server's response may look like:

   <rpc-reply message-id="6"
              xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0"
              xmlns:txid="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:txid:1.0">
     <data>
       <acls
         xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list"
         txid:etag="nc6614">
         <acl txid:etag="=">
           <name>A1</name>
         </acl>
         <acl txid:etag="nc6614">
           <name>A2</name>
           <aces txid:etag="nc6614">
             <ace txid:etag="nc4711">
               <name>R7</name>
               <matches>
                 <ipv4>
                   <dscp>10</dscp>
                 </ipv4>
               </matches>
               <actions>
                 <forwarding xmlns:acl=
                 "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">
                   acl:accept
                 <forwarding>
               </actions>
             </ace>
             <ace txid:etag="nc5152">
               <name>R8</name>
               <matches>
                 <ipv4>
                   <source-port>
                     <port>22</port>
                   </source-port>
                 </ipv4>

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               </matches>
               <actions>
                 <forwarding xmlns:acl=
                 "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">
                   acl:accept
                 <forwarding>
               </actions>
             </ace>
             <ace txid:etag="nc6614">
               <name>R9</name>
               <matches>
                 <ipv4>
                   <source-port>
                     <port>830</port>
                   </source-port>
                 </ipv4>
               </matches>
               <actions>
                 <forwarding xmlns:acl=
                 "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">
                   acl:accept
                 <forwarding>
               </actions>
             </ace>
           </aces>
         </acl>
       </acls>
     </data>
   </rpc>

   In case the client provides a txid value for a non-versioned node,
   the server needs to treat the node as having the same txid value as
   the closest ancestor that does have a txid value.

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   <rpc xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0" message-id="7"
        xmlns:txid="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:txid:1.0">
     <get-config>
       <source>
         <running/>
       </source>
       <filter>
         <acls
           xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">
           <acl>
             <name>A2</name>
             <aces>
               <ace>
                 <name>R7</name>
                 <matches>
                   <ipv4>
                     <dscp txid:etag="nc4711"/>
                   </ipv4>
                 </matches>
               </ace>
             </aces>
           </acl>
         </acls>
       </filter>
     </get-config>
   </rpc>

   If a txid value is specified for a leaf, and the txid value matches
   (i.e. is identical to the server's txid value, or found earlier in
   the server's Txid History), the leaf value is pruned.

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   <rpc-reply message-id="7"
              xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0"
              xmlns:txid="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:txid:1.0">
     <data>
       <acls
         xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">
         <acl>
           <name>A2</name>
           <aces>
             <ace>
               <name>R7</name>
               <matches>
                 <ipv4>
                   <dscp txid:etag="="/>
                 </ipv4>
               </matches>
             </ace>
           </aces>
         </acl>
       </acls>
     </data>
   </rpc-reply>

5.3.  Configuration Change

   A client that wishes to update the ace R1 protocol to tcp might send:

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   <rpc xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0" message-id="8">
     <edit-config xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0"
                  xmlns:ietf-netconf-txid=
                   "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-netconf-txid">
       <target>
         <running/>
       </target>
       <test-option>test-then-set</test-option>
       <ietf-netconf-txid:with-etag>true</ietf-netconf-txid:with-etag>
       <config>
         <acls
           xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list"
           txid:etag="nc5152">
           <acl txid:etag="nc4711">
             <name>A1</name>
             <aces txid:etag="nc4711">
               <ace txid:etag="nc4711">
                 <matches>
                   <ipv4>
                     <protocol>6</protocol>
                   </ipv4>
                 </matches>
                 <actions>
                   <forwarding xmlns:acl=
                 "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">
                     acl:accept
                   <forwarding>
                 </actions>
               </ace>
             </aces>
           </acl>
         </acls>
       </config>
     </edit-config>
   </rpc>

   The server would update the protocol leaf in the running datastore,
   and return an rpc-reply as follows:

   <rpc-reply message-id="8"
              xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0"
              xmlns:txid="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:txid:1.0">
     <ok txid:etag="nc7688"/>
   </rpc-reply>

   A subsequent get-config request for "acls", with txid:etag="?" might
   then return:

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   <rpc-reply message-id="9"
              xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0"
              xmlns:txid="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:txid:1.0">
     <data>
       <acls
         xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list"
         txid:etag="nc7688">
         <acl txid:etag="nc7688">
           <name>A1</name>
           <aces txid:etag="nc7688">
             <ace txid:etag="nc7688">
               <name>R1</name>
               <matches>
                 <ipv4>
                   <protocol>6</protocol>
                 </ipv4>
               </matches>
               <actions>
                 <forwarding xmlns:acl=
                 "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">
                   acl:accept
                 <forwarding>
               </actions>
             </ace>
           </aces>
         </acl>
         <acl txid:etag="nc6614">
           <name>A2</name>
           <aces txid:etag="nc6614">
             <ace txid:etag="nc4711">
               <name>R7</name>
               <matches>
                 <ipv4>
                   <dscp>10</dscp>
                 </ipv4>
               </matches>
               <actions>
                 <forwarding xmlns:acl=
                 "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">
                   acl:accept
                 <forwarding>
               </actions>
             </ace>
             <ace txid:etag="nc5152">
               <name>R8</name>
               <matches>
                 <udp>
                   <source-port>

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                     <port>22</port>
                   </source-port>
                 </udp>
               </matches>
               <actions>
                 <forwarding xmlns:acl=
                 "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">
                   acl:accept
                 <forwarding>
               </actions>
             </ace>
             <ace txid:etag="nc6614">
               <name>R9</name>
               <matches>
                 <tcp>
                   <source-port>
                     <port>830</port>
                   </source-port>
                 </tcp>
               </matches>
               <actions>
                 <forwarding xmlns:acl=
                 "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">
                   acl:accept
                 <forwarding>
               </actions>
             </ace>
           </aces>
         </acl>
       </acls>
     </data>
   </rpc>

   In case the server at this point received a configuration change from
   another source, such as a CLI operator, removing ace R8 and R9 in acl
   A2, a subsequent get-config request for acls, with txid:etag="?"
   might then return:

   <rpc-reply message-id="9"
              xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0"
              xmlns:txid="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:txid:1.0">
     <data>
       <acls
         xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list"
         txid:etag="cli2222">
         <acl txid:etag="nc7688">
           <name>A1</name>
           <aces txid:etag="nc7688">

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             <ace txid:etag="nc7688">
               <name>R1</name>
               <matches>
                 <ipv4>
                   <protocol>6</protocol>
                 </ipv4>
               </matches>
               <actions>
                 <forwarding xmlns:acl=
                 "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">
                   acl:accept
                 <forwarding>
               </actions>
             </ace>
           </aces>
         </acl>
         <acl txid:etag="cli2222">
           <name>A2</name>
           <aces txid:etag="cli2222">
             <ace txid:etag="nc4711">
               <name>R7</name>
               <matches>
                 <ipv4>
                   <dscp>10</dscp>
                 </ipv4>
               </matches>
               <actions>
                 <forwarding xmlns:acl=
                 "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">
                   acl:accept
                 <forwarding>
               </actions>
             </ace>
           </aces>
         </acl>
       </acls>
     </data>
   </rpc>

5.4.  Conditional Configuration Change

   If a client wishes to delete acl A1 if and only if its configuration
   has not been altered since this client last synchronized its
   configuration with the server, at which point it received the etag
   "nc7688" for acl A1, regardless of any possible changes to other
   acls, it might send:

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   <rpc xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0" message-id="10"
        xmlns:nc="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0"
        xmlns:txid="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:txid:1.0"
        xmlns:ietf-netconf-txid=
          "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-netconf-txid">
     <edit-config>
       <target>
         <running/>
       </target>
       <test-option>test-then-set</test-option>
       <ietf-netconf-txid:with-etag>true</ietf-netconf-txid:with-etag>
       <config>
         <acls xmlns=
             "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">
           <acl nc:operation="delete"
                txid:etag="nc7688">
             <name>A1</name>
           </acl>
         </acls>
       </config>
     </edit-config>
   </rpc>

   If acl A1 now has the etag txid value "nc7688", as expected by the
   client, the transaction goes through, and the server responds
   something like:

   <rpc-reply message-id="10"
              xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0"
              xmlns:txid="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:txid:1.0">
     <ok txid:etag="nc8008"/>
   </rpc-reply>

   A subsequent get-config request for acls, with txid:etag="?" might
   then return:

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   <rpc-reply message-id="11"
              xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0"
              xmlns:txid="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:txid:1.0">
     <data>
       <acls
         xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list"
         txid:etag="nc8008">
         <acl txid:etag="cli2222">
           <name>A2</name>
           <aces txid:etag="cli2222">
             <ace txid:etag="nc4711">
               <name>R7</name>
               <matches>
                 <ipv4>
                   <dscp>10</dscp>
                 </ipv4>
               </matches>
               <actions>
                 <forwarding xmlns:acl=
                 "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">
                   acl:accept
                 <forwarding>
               </actions>
             </ace>
           </aces>
         </acl>
       </acls>
     </data>
   </rpc>

   In case acl A1 did not have the expected etag txid value "nc7688"
   when the server processed this request, nor was the client's txid
   value found later in the server's Txid History, then the server
   rejects the transaction, and might send:

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   <rpc-reply xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0"
              xmlns:acl=
               "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list"
              xmlns:ietf-netconf-txid=
                "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-netconf-txid"
              message-id="11">
     <rpc-error>
       <error-type>protocol</error-type>
       <error-tag>operation-failed</error-tag>
       <error-severity>error</error-severity>
       <error-info>
         <ietf-netconf-txid:txid-value-mismatch-error-info>
           <ietf-netconf-txid:mismatch-path>
             /acl:acls/acl:acl[acl:name="A1"]
           </ietf-netconf-txid:mismatch-path>
           <ietf-netconf-txid:mismatch-etag-value>
             cli6912
           </ietf-netconf-txid:mismatch-etag-value>
         </ietf-netconf-txid:txid-value-mismatch-error-info>
       </error-info>
     </rpc-error>
   </rpc-reply>

5.5.  Reading from the Candidate Datastore

   Let's assume that a get-config towards the running datastore
   currently contains the following data and txid values:

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   <rpc-reply message-id="12"
              xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0"
              xmlns:txid="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:txid:1.0">
     <data>
       <acls
         xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list"
         txid:etag="nc4711">
         <acl txid:etag="nc4711">
           <name>A1</name>
           <aces txid:etag="nc4711">
             <ace txid:etag="nc4711">
               <name>R1</name>
               <matches>
                 <ipv4>
                   <protocol>17</protocol>
                 </ipv4>
               </matches>
               <actions>
                 <forwarding xmlns:acl=
                 "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">
                   acl:accept
                 <forwarding>
               </actions>
             </ace>
             <ace txid:etag="nc2219">
               <name>R2</name>
               <matches>
                 <ipv4>
                   <dscp>21</dscp>
                 </ipv4>
               </matches>
               <actions>
                 <forwarding xmlns:acl=
                 "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">
                   acl:accept
                 <forwarding>
               </actions>
             </ace>
           </aces>
         </acl>
       </acls>
     </data>
   </rpc-reply>

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   A client issues discard-changes (to make the candidate datastore
   equal to the running datastore), and issues an edit-config to change
   the R1 protocol from udp (17) to tcp (6), and then executes a get-
   config with the txid-request attribute "?" set on the acl A1, the
   server might respond:

   <rpc-reply message-id="13"
              xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0"
              xmlns:txid="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:txid:1.0">
     <data>
       <acls
         xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">
         <acl txid:etag="!">
           <name>A1</name>
           <aces txid:etag="!">
             <ace txid:etag="!">
               <name>R1</name>
               <matches>
                 <ipv4>
                   <protocol>6</protocol>
                 </ipv4>
               </matches>
               <actions>
                 <forwarding xmlns:acl=
                 "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">
                   acl:accept
                 <forwarding>
               </actions>
             </ace>
             <ace txid:etag="nc2219">
               <name>R2</name>
               <matches>
                 <ipv4>
                   <dscp>21</dscp>
                 </ipv4>
               </matches>
               <actions>
                 <forwarding xmlns:acl=
                 "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">
                   acl:accept
                 <forwarding>
               </actions>
             </ace>
           </aces>
         </acl>
       </acls>
     </data>
   </rpc-reply>

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   Here, the txid-unknown value "!" is sent by the server.  This
   particular server implementation does not know beforehand which txid
   value would be used for this versioned node after commit.  It will be
   a value different from the current corresponding txid value in the
   running datastore.

   In case the server is able to predict the txid value that would be
   used for the versioned node after commit, it could respond with that
   value instead.  Let's say the server knows the txid would be "7688"
   if the candidate datastore was committed without further changes,
   then it would respond with that value in each place where the example
   shows "!" above.

5.6.  Commit

   The client MAY request that the new etag txid value is returned as an
   attribute on the ok response for a successful commit.  The client
   requests this by adding with-etag to the commit operation.

   For example, a client might send:

   <rpc message-id="14"
       xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0">
       xmlns:ietf-netconf-txid=
         "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-netconf-txid"
     <commit>
       <ietf-netconf-txid:with-etag>true</ietf-netconf-txid:with-etag>
     </commit>
   </rpc>

   Assuming the server accepted the transaction, it might respond:

   <rpc-reply message-id="14"
       xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0"
       xmlns:txid="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:txid:1.0">
     <ok txid:etag="nc8008"/>
   </rpc-reply>

5.7.  YANG-Push

   A client MAY request that the updates for one or more YANG-Push
   subscriptions are annotated with the txid values.  The request might
   look like this:

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   <netconf:rpc message-id="16"
                xmlns:netconf="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0">
     <establish-subscription
         xmlns=
           "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-subscribed-notifications"
         xmlns:yp="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-yang-push"
         xmlns:ietf-netconf-txid-yp=
           "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-txid-yang-push">
       <yp:datastore
           xmlns:ds="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-datastores">
         ds:running
       </yp:datastore>
       <yp:datastore-xpath-filter
           xmlns:acl=
             "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">
         /acl:acls
       </yp:datastore-xpath-filter>
       <yp:on-change/>
       <ietf-netconf-txid-yp:with-etag>
         true
       </ietf-netconf-txid-yp:with-etag>
     </establish-subscription>
   </netconf:rpc>

   A server might send a subscription update like this:

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   <notification
     xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:notification:1.0"
     xmlns:ietf-netconf-txid-yp=
       "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-netconf-txid-yang-push">
     <eventTime>2022-04-04T06:00:24.16Z</eventTime>
     <push-change-update
         xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-yang-push">
       <id>89</id>
       <datastore-changes>
         <yang-patch>
           <patch-id>0</patch-id>
           <edit>
             <edit-id>edit1</edit-id>
             <operation>delete</operation>
             <target xmlns:acl=
               "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">
               /acl:acls
             </target>
             <value>
               <acl xmlns=
                 "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-access-control-list">
                 <name>A1</name>
               </acl>
             </value>
           </edit>
           <ietf-netconf-txid-yp:etag-value>
             nc8008
           </ietf-netconf-txid-yp:etag-value>
         </yang-patch>
       </datastore-changes>
     </push-change-update>
   </notification>

   In case a client wishes to modify a previous subscription request in
   order to no longer receive YANG-Push subscription updates, the
   request might look like this:

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   <rpc message-id="17"
       xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0">
     <modify-subscription
         xmlns=
           "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-subscribed-notifications"
         xmlns:yp="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-yang-push"
         xmlns:ietf-netconf-txid-yp=
           "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-txid-yang-push">
       <id>1011</id>
       <yp:datastore
           xmlns:ds="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-datastores">
         ds:running
       </yp:datastore>
       <ietf-netconf-txid-yp:with-etag>
         false
       </ietf-netconf-txid-yp:with-etag>
     </modify-subscription>
   </rpc>

5.8.  NMDA Compare

   The following example is taken from section 5 of [RFC9144].  It
   compares the difference between the operational and intended
   datastores for a subtree under "interfaces".

   In this version of the example, the client requests that txid values,
   in this case etag-values, are annotated to the result.

   <rpc message-id="101"
       xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0">
     <compare xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-nmda-compare"
         xmlns:ds="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-datastores"
         xmlns:ietf-netconf-txid-nmda-compare=
           "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-netconf-txid-nmda-compare">
       <source>ds:operational</source>
       <target>ds:intended</target>
       <report-origin/>
       <ietf-netconf-txid-nmda-compare:with-etag>
         true
       </ietf-netconf-txid-nmda-compare:with-etag>
       <xpath-filter
           xmlns:if="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-interfaces">
         /if:interfaces
       </xpath-filter>
     </compare>
   </rpc>

   RPC reply when a difference is detected:

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   <rpc-reply
       xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0"
       message-id="101">
     <differences
       xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-nmda-compare"
       xmlns:or="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-origin"
       xmlns:ietf-netconf-txid-nmda-compare=
         "urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-netconf-txid-nmda-compare">
       <yang-patch>
         <patch-id>interface status</patch-id>
         <comment>
           diff between operational (source) and intended (target),
           with txid values taken from intended.
         </comment>
         <edit>
           <edit-id>1</edit-id>
           <operation>replace</operation>
           <target>/ietf-interfaces:interface=eth0/enabled</target>
           <value>
             <if:enabled>false</if:enabled>
           </value>
           <source-value>
             <if:enabled or:origin="or:learned">true</if:enabled>
           </source-value>
           <ietf-netconf-txid-nmda-compare:etag-value>
             4004
           </ietf-netconf-txid-nmda-compare:etag-value>
         </edit>
         <edit>
           <edit-id>2</edit-id>
           <operation>create</operation>
           <target>/ietf-interfaces:interface=eth0/description</target>
           <value>
             <if:description>ip interface</if:description>
           </value>
           <ietf-netconf-txid-nmda-compare:etag-value>
             8008
           </ietf-netconf-txid-nmda-compare:etag-value>
         </edit>
       </yang-patch>
     </differences>
   </rpc-reply>

   The same response in RESTCONF (using JSON format):

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   HTTP/1.1 200 OK
   Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2019 20:56:30 GMT
   Server: example-server
   Content-Type: application/yang-data+json

   { "ietf-nmda-compare:output" : {
       "differences" : {
         "ietf-yang-patch:yang-patch" : {
           "patch-id" : "interface status",
           "comment" : "diff between intended (source) and operational",
           "edit" : [
             {
               "edit-id" : "1",
               "operation" : "replace",
               "target" : "/ietf-interfaces:interface=eth0/enabled",
               "value" : {
                 "ietf-interfaces:interface/enabled" : "false"
               },
               "source-value" : {
                 "ietf-interfaces:interface/enabled" : "true",
                 "@ietf-interfaces:interface/enabled" : {
                   "ietf-origin:origin" : "ietf-origin:learned"
                 }
               },
               "ietf-netconf-txid-nmda-compare:etag-value": "4004"
             },
             {
               "edit-id" : "2",
               "operation" : "create",
               "target" : "/ietf-interfaces:interface=eth0/description",
               "value" : {
                 "ietf-interface:interface/description" : "ip interface"
               },
               "ietf-netconf-txid-nmda-compare:etag-value": "8008"
             }
           ]
         }
       }
     }
   }

6.  YANG Modules

6.1.  Base module for txid in NETCONF

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   <CODE BEGINS>
   module ietf-netconf-txid {
     yang-version 1.1;
     namespace
       'urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-netconf-txid';
     prefix ietf-netconf-txid;

     import ietf-netconf {
       prefix nc;
     }

     import ietf-netconf-nmda {
       prefix ncds;
     }

     import ietf-yang-structure-ext {
       prefix sx;
     }

     import ietf-yang-types {
       prefix yang;
     }

     organization
       "IETF NETCONF (Network Configuration) Working Group";

     contact
       "WG Web:   <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/netconf/>
        WG List:  <netconf@ietf.org>

        Author:   Jan Lindblad
                  <mailto:jlindbla@cisco.com>";

     description
       "NETCONF Transaction ID aware operations for NMDA.

        Copyright (c) 2022 IETF Trust and the persons identified as
        authors of the code.  All rights reserved.

        Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or
        without modification, is permitted pursuant to, and subject to
        the license terms contained in, the Revised BSD License set
        forth in Section 4.c of the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions
        Relating to IETF Documents
        (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info).

        This version of this YANG module is part of RFC XXXX
        (https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfcXXXX); see the RFC itself

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        for full legal notices.

        The key words 'MUST', 'MUST NOT', 'REQUIRED', 'SHALL', 'SHALL
        NOT', 'SHOULD', 'SHOULD NOT', 'RECOMMENDED', 'NOT RECOMMENDED',
        'MAY', and 'OPTIONAL' in this document are to be interpreted as
        described in BCP 14 (RFC 2119) (RFC 8174) when, and only when,
        they appear in all capitals, as shown here.
        ";

     revision 2023-03-01 {
       description
         "Initial revision";
       reference
         "RFC XXXX: Xxxxxxxxx";
     }

     feature last-modified {
       description "Servers implementing this module MUST support the
         etag txid mechanism.  Servers MAY also support the
         last-modified txid mechanism.  Support is shown by announcing
         this feature.";
     }

     extension versioned-node {
       description "This statement is used by servers to declare that a
         the server is maintaining a Txid for the YANG node with this
         statement.  Which YANG nodes are versioned nodes may be useful
         information for clients (especially during development).

         Servers are not required to use this statement to declare
         which nodes are versioned nodes.

         Example of use:

         container interfaces {
           ietf-netconf-txid:versioned-node;
           ...
         }
         ";
     }

     typedef etag-t {
       type string {
         pattern ".* .*" {
           modifier invert-match;
         }
         pattern '.*".*' {
           modifier invert-match;

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         }
         pattern ".*\\.*" {
           modifier invert-match;
         }
       }
       description
         "Unique Entity-tag txid value representing a specific
         transaction.  Could be any string that does not contain
         spaces, double quotes or backslash.  The txid values '?',
         '!' and '=' have special meaning.";
     }

     typedef last-modified-t {
       type union {
         type yang:date-and-time;
         type enumeration {
           enum ? {
             description "Txid value used by clients that is
               guaranteed not to match any txid on the server.";
           }
           enum ! {
             description "Txid value used by servers to indicate
               the node in the candidate datastore has changed
               relative the running datastore, but not yet received
               a new txid value on the server.";
           }
           enum = {
             description "Txid value used by servers to indicate
               that contents has been pruned due to txid match
               between client and server.";
           }
         }
       }
       description
         "Last-modified txid value representing a specific transaction.
          The txid values '?', '!' and '=' have special meaning.";
     }

     grouping txid-grouping {
       leaf with-etag {
         type boolean;
         description
           "Indicates whether the client requests the server to include
            a txid:etag txid attribute when the configuration has
            changed.";
       }
       leaf with-last-modified {
         if-feature last-modified;

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         type boolean;
         description
           "Indicates whether the client requests the server to include
            a txid:last-modified attribute when the configuration has
            changed.";
       }
       description
         "Grouping for txid mechanisms, to be augmented into
          rpcs that modify configuration data stores.";
     }

     grouping txid-value-grouping {
       leaf etag-value {
         type etag-t;
         description
           "Indicates server's txid value for a YANG node.";
       }
       leaf last-modified-value {
         if-feature last-modified;
         type last-modified-t;
         description
           "Indicates server's txid value for a YANG node.";
       }
       description
         "Grouping for txid mechanisms, to be augmented into
          output of rpcs that return txid metadata for configuration
          data stores.";
     }

     augment /nc:edit-config/nc:input {
       uses txid-grouping;
       description
         "Injects the txid mechanisms into the
         edit-config operation";
     }

     augment /nc:commit/nc:input {
       uses txid-grouping;
       description
         "Injects the txid mechanisms into the
         commit operation";
     }

     augment /ncds:edit-data/ncds:input {
       uses txid-grouping;
       description
         "Injects the txid mechanisms into the
         edit-data operation";

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     }

     sx:structure txid-value-mismatch-error-info {
       container txid-value-mismatch-error-info {
         description
            "This error is returned by a NETCONF server when a client
             sends a configuration change request, with the additonal
             condition that the server aborts the transaction if the
             server's configuration has changed from what the client
             expects, and the configuration is found not to actually
             not match the client's expectation.";
         leaf mismatch-path {
           type instance-identifier;
           description
             "Indicates the YANG path to the element with a mismatching
              etag txid value.";
         }
         leaf mismatch-etag-value {
           type etag-t;
           description
             "Indicates server's txid value of the etag
             attribute for one mismatching element.";
         }
         leaf mismatch-last-modified-value {
           if-feature last-modified;
           type last-modified-t;
           description
             "Indicates server's txid value of the last-modified
             attribute for one mismatching element.";
         }
       }
     }
   }
   <CODE ENDS>

6.2.  Additional support for txid in YANG-Push

   <CODE BEGINS>
   module ietf-netconf-txid-yang-push {
     yang-version 1.1;
     namespace
       'urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-netconf-txid-yang-push';
     prefix ietf-netconf-txid-yp;

     import ietf-subscribed-notifications {
       prefix sn;
       reference
         "RFC 8639: Subscription to YANG Notifications";

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     }

     import ietf-yang-push {
       prefix yp;
       reference
         "RFC 8641: Subscriptions to YANG Datastores";
     }

     import ietf-yang-patch {
       prefix ypatch;
       reference
         "RFC 8072: YANG Patch Media Type";
     }

     import ietf-netconf-txid {
       prefix ietf-netconf-txid;
       reference
         "RFC XXXX: Xxxxxxxxx";
     }

     organization
       "IETF NETCONF (Network Configuration) Working Group";

     contact
       "WG Web:   <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/netconf/>
        WG List:  <netconf@ietf.org>

        Author:   Jan Lindblad
                  <mailto:jlindbla@cisco.com>";

     description
       "NETCONF Transaction ID aware operations for YANG Push.

        Copyright (c) 2022 IETF Trust and the persons identified as
        authors of the code.  All rights reserved.

        Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or
        without modification, is permitted pursuant to, and subject to
        the license terms contained in, the Revised BSD License set
        forth in Section 4.c of the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions
        Relating to IETF Documents
        (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info).

        This version of this YANG module is part of RFC XXXX
        (https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfcXXXX); see the RFC itself
        for full legal notices.

        The key words 'MUST', 'MUST NOT', 'REQUIRED', 'SHALL', 'SHALL

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        NOT', 'SHOULD', 'SHOULD NOT', 'RECOMMENDED', 'NOT RECOMMENDED',
        'MAY', and 'OPTIONAL' in this document are to be interpreted as
        described in BCP 14 (RFC 2119) (RFC 8174) when, and only when,
        they appear in all capitals, as shown here.
        ";

     revision 2022-04-01 {
       description
         "Initial revision";
       reference
         "RFC XXXX: Xxxxxxxxx";
     }

     augment "/sn:establish-subscription/sn:input" {
       description
         "This augmentation adds additional subscription parameters
          that apply specifically to datastore updates to RPC input.";
       uses ietf-netconf-txid:txid-grouping;
     }
     augment "/sn:modify-subscription/sn:input" {
       description
         "This augmentation adds additional subscription parameters
          specific to datastore updates.";
       uses ietf-netconf-txid:txid-grouping;
     }
     augment "/sn:subscriptions/sn:subscription" {
       description
         "This augmentation adds additional subscription parameters
          specific to datastore updates.";
       uses ietf-netconf-txid:txid-grouping;
     }
     augment "/yp:push-change-update/yp:datastore-changes/" +
             "yp:yang-patch" {
       description
         "This augmentation makes it possible for servers to return
         txid-values.";
       uses ietf-netconf-txid:txid-value-grouping;
     }
   }
   <CODE ENDS>

6.3.  Additional support for txid in NMDA Compare

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   <CODE BEGINS>
   module ietf-netconf-txid-nmda-compare {
     yang-version 1.1;
     namespace
       'urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-netconf-txid-nmda-compare';
     prefix ietf-netconf-txid-nmda-compare;

     import ietf-nmda-compare {
       prefix cmp;
       reference
         "RFC 9144: Comparison of Network Management Datastore
          Architecture (NMDA) Datastores";
     }

     import ietf-netconf-txid {
       prefix ietf-netconf-txid;
       reference
         "RFC XXXX: Xxxxxxxxx";
     }

     organization
       "IETF NETCONF (Network Configuration) Working Group";

     contact
       "WG Web:   <http://tools.ietf.org/wg/netconf/>
        WG List:  <netconf@ietf.org>

        Author:   Jan Lindblad
                  <mailto:jlindbla@cisco.com>";

     description
       "NETCONF Transaction ID aware operations for NMDA Compare.

        Copyright (c) 2022 IETF Trust and the persons identified as
        authors of the code.  All rights reserved.

        Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or
        without modification, is permitted pursuant to, and subject to
        the license terms contained in, the Revised BSD License set
        forth in Section 4.c of the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions
        Relating to IETF Documents
        (https://trustee.ietf.org/license-info).

        This version of this YANG module is part of RFC XXXX
        (https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfcXXXX); see the RFC itself
        for full legal notices.

        The key words 'MUST', 'MUST NOT', 'REQUIRED', 'SHALL', 'SHALL

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        NOT', 'SHOULD', 'SHOULD NOT', 'RECOMMENDED', 'NOT RECOMMENDED',
        'MAY', and 'OPTIONAL' in this document are to be interpreted as
        described in BCP 14 (RFC 2119) (RFC 8174) when, and only when,
        they appear in all capitals, as shown here.
        ";

     revision 2023-05-01 {
       description
         "Initial revision";
       reference
         "RFC XXXX: Xxxxxxxxx";
     }

     augment "/cmp:compare/cmp:input" {
       description
         "This augmentation makes it possible for clients to request
          txids to be returned.";
       uses ietf-netconf-txid:txid-grouping;
     }
     augment "/cmp:compare/cmp:output/cmp:compare-response/" +
             "cmp:differences/cmp:differences/cmp:yang-patch/cmp:edit" {
       description
         "This augmentation makes it possible for servers to return
         txid-values.";
       container most-recent {
         description "The txid value returned by the server MUST be the
           txid value pertaining to the target node in the source or
           target datastores that is the most recent.";
         uses ietf-netconf-txid:txid-value-grouping;
       }
     }
   }
   <CODE ENDS>

7.  Security Considerations

7.1.  NACM Access Control

   NACM, [RFC8341], access control processing happens as usual,
   independently of any txid handling, if supported by the server and
   enabled by the NACM configuration.

   It should be pointed out however, that when txid information is added
   to a reply, it may occasionally be possible for a client to deduce
   that a configuration change has happened in some part of the
   configuration to which it has no access rights.

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   For example, a client may notice that the root node txid has changed
   while none of the subtrees it has access to have changed, and thereby
   conclude that someone else has made a change to some part of the
   configuration that is not acessible by the client.

7.1.1.  Hash-based Txid Algorithms

   Servers that implement NACM and choose to implement a hash-based txid
   algorithm over the configuration may reveal to a client that the
   configuration of a subtree that the client has no access to is the
   same as it was at an earlier point in time.

   For example, a client with partial access to the configuration might
   observe that the root node txid was 1234.  After a few configuration
   changes by other parties, the client may again observe that the root
   node txid is 1234.  It may then deduce that the configuration is the
   same as earlier, even in the parts of the configuration it has no
   access to.

   In some use cases, this behavior may be considered a feature, since
   it allows a security client to verify that the configuration is the
   same as expected, without transmitting or storing the actual
   configuration.

7.2.  Unchanged Configuration

   It will also be possible for clients to deduce that a configuration
   change has not happened during some period, by simply observing that
   the root node (or other subtree) txid remains unchanged.  This is
   true regardless of NACM being deployed or choice of txid algorithm.

   Again, there may be use cases where this behavior may be considered a
   feature, since it allows a security client to verify that the
   configuration is the same as expected, without transmitting or
   storing the actual configuration.

8.  IANA Considerations

   This document registers the following capability identifier URN in
   the 'Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF) Capability URNs'
   registry:

     urn:ietf:params:netconf:capability:txid:1.0

   This document registers four XML namespace URNs in the 'IETF XML
   registry', following the format defined in [RFC3688].

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     URI: urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:txid:1.0

     URI: urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-netconf-txid

     URI: urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-netconf-txid-yang-push

     URI: urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-netconf-txid-nmda-compare

     Registrant Contact: The IESG.

     XML: N/A, the requested URIs are XML namespaces.

   This document registers three module names in the 'YANG Module Names'
   registry, defined in [RFC6020].

     name: ietf-netconf-txid

     prefix: ietf-netconf-txid

     namespace: urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-netconf-txid

     RFC: XXXX

   and

     name: ietf-netconf-txid-yp

     prefix: ietf-netconf-txid-yp

     namespace: urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-netconf-txid-yang-push

     RFC: XXXX

   and

     name: ietf-netconf-txid-nmda-compare

     prefix: ietf-netconf-txid-nmda-compare

     namespace:
       urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-netconf-txid-nmda-compare

     RFC: XXXX

9.  Changes

9.1.  Major changes in -03 since -02

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   *  Updated language slightly regarding format of etag values, and
      some recommendations for implementors that support etags in
      multiple management protocols (NETCONF, RESTCONF, ...) and
      encodings (XML, JSON, ...).

   *  Added missing normative RFC references.

   *  Corrected the YANG-push namespace reference.

9.2.  Major changes in -02 since -01

   *  Added optional to implement Txid History concept in order to make
      the algorithm both more efficient and less verbose.  Servers may
      still choose a Txid History size of zero, which makes the server
      behavior the same as in earlier versions of this document.
      Implementations that use txids consisting of a monotonically
      increasing integer or timestamp will be able to determine the
      sequnce of transactions in the history directly, making this
      trivially simple to implement.

   *  Added extension statement versioned-node, which servers may use to
      declare which YANG tree nodes are Versioned Nodes.  This is
      entirely optional, however, but possibly useful to client
      developers.

   *  Renamed YANG feature ietf-netconf-txid:txid-last-modified to ietf-
      netconf-txid:last-modified in order to reduce redundant mentions
      of "txid".

9.3.  Major changes in -01 since -00

   *  Changed YANG-push txid mechanism to use a simple leaf rather than
      an attribute to convey txid information.  This is preferable since
      YANG-push content may be requested using other protocols than
      NETCONF and other encodings than XML.  By removing the need for
      XML attributes in this context, the mechanism becomes
      significantly more portable.

   *  Added a section and YANG module augmenting the RFC9144 NMDA
      datastore compare operation to allow request and reply with txid
      information.  This too is done with augments of plain leafs for
      maximum portability.

   *  Added note clarifying that the txid attributes used in the XML
      encoding are never used in JSON (since RESTCONF uses HTTP headers
      instead).

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   *  Added note clarifying that pruning happens when client and server
      txids _match_, since the server sending information to the client
      only makes sense when the information on the client is out of
      date.

   *  Added note clarifying that this entire document is about config
      true data only.

   *  Rephrased slightly when referring to the candidate datastore to
      keep making sense in the event that private candidate datastores
      become a reality in the future.

   *  Added a note early on to more clearly lay out the structure of
      this document, with a first part about the generic mechanism part,
      and a second part about the two specific txid mechanisms.

   *  Corrected acl data model examples to conform to their YANG module.

9.4.  Major changes in draft-ietf-netconf-transaction-id-00 since -02

   *  Changed the logic around how txids are handled in the candidate
      datastore, both when reading (get-config, get-data) and writing
      (edit-config, edit-data).  Introduced a special "txid-unknown"
      value "!".

   *  Changed the logic of copy-config to be similar to edit-config.

   *  Clarified how txid values interact with when-dependencies together
      with default values.

   *  Added content to security considerations.

   *  Added a high-level example for YANG-Push subscriptions with txid.

   *  Updated language about error-info sent at txid mismatch in an
      edit-config: error-info with mismatch details MUST be sent when
      mismatch detected, and that the server can choose one of the txid
      mismatch occurrences if there is more than one.

   *  Some rewording and minor additions for clarification, based on
      mailing list feedback.

   *  Divided RFC references into normative and informative.

   *  Corrected a logic error in the second figure (figure 6) in the
      "Conditional Transactions" section

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9.5.  Major changes in -02 since -01

   *  A last-modified txid mechanism has been added (back).  This
      mechanism aligns well with the Last-Modified mechanism defined in
      RESTCONF [RFC8040], but is not a carbon copy.

   *  YANG-Push functionality has been added.  This allows YANG-Push
      users to receive txid updates as part of the configuration
      updates.  This functionality comes in a separate YANG module, to
      allow implementors to cleanly keep all this functionality out.

   *  Changed name of "versioned elements".  They are now called
      "Versioned Nodes".

   *  Clarified txid behavior for transactions toward the Candidate
      datastore, and some not so common situations, such as when a
      client specifies a txid for a non-versioned node, and when there
      are when-statement dependencies across subtrees.

   *  Examples provided for the abstract mechanism level with simple
      message flow diagrams.

   *  More examples on protocol level, and with ietf-interfaces as
      example target module replaced with ietf-access-control to reduce
      confusion.

   *  Explicit list of XPaths to clearly state where etag or last-
      modified attributes may be added by clients and servers.

   *  Document introduction restructured to remove duplication between
      sections and to allow multiple (etag and last-modified) txid
      mechanisms.

   *  Moved the actual YANG module code into proper module files that
      are included in the source document.  These modules can be
      compiled as proper modules without any extraction tools.

9.6.  Major changes in -01 since -00

   *  Updated the text on numerous points in order to answer questions
      that appeared on the mailing list.

   *  Changed the document structure into a general transaction id part
      and one etag specific part.

   *  Renamed entag attribute to etag, prefix to txid, namespace to
      urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yang:ietf-netconf-txid.

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   *  Set capability string to
      urn:ietf:params:netconf:capability:txid:1.0

   *  Changed YANG module name, namespace and prefix to match names
      above.

   *  Harmonized/slightly adjusted etag value space with RFC 7232 and
      RFC 8040.

   *  Removed all text discussing etag values provided by the client
      (although this is still an interesting idea, if you ask the
      author)

   *  Clarified the etag attribute mechanism, especially when it comes
      to matching against non-versioned elements, its cascading upwards
      in the tree and secondary effects from when- and choice-
      statements.

   *  Added a mechanism for returning the server assigned etag value in
      get-config and get-data.

   *  Added section describing how the NETCONF discard-changes, copy-
      config, delete-config and commit operations work with respect to
      etags.

   *  Added IANA Considerations section.

   *  Removed all comments about open questions.

10.  References

10.1.  Normative References

   [RFC2119]  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
              Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc2119>.

   [RFC6241]  Enns, R., Ed., Bjorklund, M., Ed., Schoenwaelder, J., Ed.,
              and A. Bierman, Ed., "Network Configuration Protocol
              (NETCONF)", RFC 6241, DOI 10.17487/RFC6241, June 2011,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6241>.

   [RFC6991]  Schoenwaelder, J., Ed., "Common YANG Data Types",
              RFC 6991, DOI 10.17487/RFC6991, July 2013,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6991>.

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   [RFC7950]  Bjorklund, M., Ed., "The YANG 1.1 Data Modeling Language",
              RFC 7950, DOI 10.17487/RFC7950, August 2016,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7950>.

   [RFC8040]  Bierman, A., Bjorklund, M., and K. Watsen, "RESTCONF
              Protocol", RFC 8040, DOI 10.17487/RFC8040, January 2017,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8040>.

   [RFC8072]  Bierman, A., Bjorklund, M., and K. Watsen, "YANG Patch
              Media Type", RFC 8072, DOI 10.17487/RFC8072, February
              2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8072>.

   [RFC8174]  Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
              2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
              May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8174>.

   [RFC8526]  Bjorklund, M., Schoenwaelder, J., Shafer, P., Watsen, K.,
              and R. Wilton, "NETCONF Extensions to Support the Network
              Management Datastore Architecture", RFC 8526,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8526, March 2019,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8526>.

   [RFC8639]  Voit, E., Clemm, A., Gonzalez Prieto, A., Nilsen-Nygaard,
              E., and A. Tripathy, "Subscription to YANG Notifications",
              RFC 8639, DOI 10.17487/RFC8639, September 2019,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8639>.

   [RFC8641]  Clemm, A. and E. Voit, "Subscription to YANG Notifications
              for Datastore Updates", RFC 8641, DOI 10.17487/RFC8641,
              September 2019, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8641>.

   [RFC8791]  Bierman, A., Björklund, M., and K. Watsen, "YANG Data
              Structure Extensions", RFC 8791, DOI 10.17487/RFC8791,
              June 2020, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8791>.

   [RFC9144]  Clemm, A., Qu, Y., Tantsura, J., and A. Bierman,
              "Comparison of Network Management Datastore Architecture
              (NMDA) Datastores", RFC 9144, DOI 10.17487/RFC9144,
              December 2021, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9144>.

10.2.  Informative References

   [RFC3688]  Mealling, M., "The IETF XML Registry", BCP 81, RFC 3688,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC3688, January 2004,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3688>.

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Internet-Draft                    NCTID                       March 2024

   [RFC6020]  Bjorklund, M., Ed., "YANG - A Data Modeling Language for
              the Network Configuration Protocol (NETCONF)", RFC 6020,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC6020, October 2010,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6020>.

   [RFC7232]  Fielding, R., Ed. and J. Reschke, Ed., "Hypertext Transfer
              Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Conditional Requests", RFC 7232,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC7232, June 2014,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7232>.

   [RFC7952]  Lhotka, L., "Defining and Using Metadata with YANG",
              RFC 7952, DOI 10.17487/RFC7952, August 2016,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7952>.

   [RFC8341]  Bierman, A. and M. Bjorklund, "Network Configuration
              Access Control Model", STD 91, RFC 8341,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8341, March 2018,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8341>.

Acknowledgments

   The author wishes to thank Benoit Claise for making this work happen,
   and the following individuals, who all provided helpful comments: Per
   Andersson, James Cumming, Kent Watsen, Andy Bierman, Robert Wilton,
   Qiufang Ma, Jason Sterne and Robert Varga.

Author's Address

   Jan Lindblad
   Cisco Systems
   Email: jlindbla@cisco.com

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