Network Working Group P. Hoffman
Internet-Draft VPN Consortium
Intended status: Informational January 28, 2011
Expires: August 1, 2011
Requirements for Draft Tracking by the IETF Community in the Datatracker
draft-ietf-genarea-datatracker-community-05
Abstract
The document gives a set of requirements for extending the IETF
Datatracker to give individual IETF community members, including the
IETF leadership, easy methods for tracking the progress of the
Internet Drafts and RFCs of interest to them.
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 http://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."
This Internet-Draft will expire on August 1, 2011.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2011 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
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
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include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.1. Usage Scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2. Context for This Document . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.3. Definitions Used in This Document . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.4. Expected user interactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.5. Discussion of These Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2. Requirements for Tools Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.1. Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
2.1.1. Requirement: Lists of drafts and RFCs can be large . . 7
2.1.2. Requirement: Every Datatracker user can create a
list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.1.3. Requirement: Read-only views of private lists can
be made visible to others . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.1.4. Requirement: The Datatracker must support optional
publicly-readable lists for WGs and Area Directors . . 8
2.1.5. Requirement: Specifying the drafts and RFCs that
are in a list must be simple . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.1.6. Requirement: Adding groups of drafts to a list by
attribute must be simple . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.1.7. Requirement: These extensions must not make the
Datatracker take up too many resources . . . . . . . . 10
2.1.8. Requirement: Private information must not be
exposed in lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.2. Notifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.2.1. Requirement: Users can be notified when a draft
changes status . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.2.2. Requirement: Every list has Atom feeds associated
with it . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.2.3. Requirement: Every list has mail streams
associated with it . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.2.4. Requirement: Notifications need to specify which
list caused the notification . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.3. Display in the Datatracker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.3.1. Requirement: Users can define how the rows are
sorted in a display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.3.2. Requirement: Users can choose which attributes to
display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.3.3. Requirement: Users can flag drafts with dates in
the future . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.3.4. Requirement: Users can specify highlighting of
drafts and RFCs with recent changes . . . . . . . . . 14
2.4. File Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.4.1. Requirement: Users can get their current list as a
single file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
3. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
4. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
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5. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
6. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Appendix A. Possible Tracking of Other Documents . . . . . . . . 16
A.1. Tracking WG Charter Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
A.2. Tracking IANA Registry Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
A.3. Tracking Changes in the Liason Statement Directory . . . . 16
A.4. Tracking Changes in Documents Outside the IETF Sphere . . 16
Appendix B. Some Known Open Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Appendix C. Ideas that Might Be Implemented Later . . . . . . . . 17
Appendix D. Differences Between -04 and -05 . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
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1. Introduction
The IETF Datatracker is used by many IETF community members to find
the status of Internet Drafts (I-Ds) and RFCs, and view drafts and
RFCs that meet particular criteria. The current Datatracker, found
at <https://datatracker.ietf.org/>, allows anyone to search for
active I-Ds and RFCs, and get a list matching the given criteria.
(The Datatracker also allows for expired I-Ds, but those are not
relevant to this discussion.)
Users can search in the Datatracker by the filename of the draft,
words in the draft's title, author, associated Working Group (WG) or
IETF area, the responsible Area Director (AD), or IESG status. They
can search for RFCs by number or words in the title. The returned
list of drafts and/or RFCs includes five columns: filename or RFC
number (with an active link to an HTMLized version maintained by the
IETF tools team), the document's title, the date it was published,
its status in the IETF or RFC process, and the responsible AD (if
any). For example, the output of a search in the current Datatracker
can be seen at <http://imgur.com/DD3AL>.
Instead of using the search capability of the Datatracker to manually
find I-Ds and RFCs of interest, users might want to create a list of
drafts that they normally follow. Some users will want to keep their
list to themselves, but others will want to allow others to view
their list.
Different users in the IETF community will have different ways that
they want to get information on draft and RFC updates and status.
Many users will want to be notified immediately, such as through an
Atom feed (see [RFC4287]) or automatically-generated email. Many
users will want to only find out about updates when they go to a web
page. Many users might want to get the data for a list as input to
other tools. And, of course, some users will want all three. All of
these desires are related to the overall desire to track drafts
through their lifecycle.
1.1. Usage Scenarios
The main motivation for these proposed changes to the Datatracker is
to allow a variety of potential users to be able to track drafts and
RFCs, and thus be better able to see when important events happen. A
few examples include:
o A WG chair might want to keep a list of all the drafts from other
WGs that relate to active drafts in his or her WG.
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o That same WG chair might want to help WG members be able to follow
the same drafts that he or she is following.
o Someone who cares about an established topic such as the DNS may
want to follow the various drafts that might make changes to the
DNS, as well as seeing if any of the DNS RFCs are later updated
and/or have errata posted against them. This would include not
only drafts that are in the many WGs that directly are changing
the DNS (DNSEXT, DNSOP, BEHAVE, and so on), but also individual
submissions, IAB drafts, and even IRTF research. It would also
include RFCs from before when WGs were tracked.
o Developers who are not active in the IETF process might want to
lightly follow drafts and RFCs on a particular topic to watch for
things that might affect their implementations.
o An IETF "regular" might want to follow parts of the process by
focusing on all the drafts that are being shepherded by a
particular Area Director.
1.2. Context for This Document
This document describes the requirements for extending the
Datatracker for such capabilities. When complete, this document may
be used to issue an RFP for the design and development of these
enhancements to the Datatracker. This document was prepared at the
request of the IAOC.
Some of the requirements in this document are listed as "later
requirements". This means that these requirements might not be part
of the first RFP for adding these enhancements.
The statement of work that led to this document says "The tools that
will eventually be provided to individuals in the community include":
o the ability to create one or more (possibly large) lists of I-Ds
that they want to follow
o the ability to get notifications when individual drafts from a
list changes state
o the ability to see all of the state changes that have occurred on
all the drafts in a list over a specified range of dates
o the ability to set the granularity of the changes (such as "every
change", "just approvals and publication", and so on)
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o the ability to organize their views of a list in many fashions
that would be useful to different types of community members
o the ability to share and merge lists with other community members
Note that [RFC2026] describes the process that Internet Drafts go
through before they either become RFCs or are abandoned. The
Datatracker does not control this process: instead, it simply reports
on the current state of individual drafts as they go through the
process.
1.3. Definitions Used in This Document
A "user" is an individual person who is member of the IETF community.
A "list" is an unordered set of RFCs, Internet Drafts, and groups of
Internet Drafts. Lists are specified by users. In some cases, the
authors are role-based, such as a WG chair being the specifier of the
list associated with that WG.
An "attribute" is a feature of a draft or RFC, such as its filename
or RFC number, its current state in the IETF or RFC process, and so
on. Attributes are usually displayed as columns in the Datatracker.
A "row" is a set of attributes about a single draft or RFC that is
displayed in the Datatracker.
A "significant change in status" is all approvals and disposition of
a draft. Assuming that the changes to the Datatracker specified in
[WGSTATES] and [ALTSTREAMS] are made, "all approvals" means the
following:
o IETF stream: the WG states "Adopted by a WG", "In WG Last Call",
"WG Consensus: Waiting for Write-up", "Parked WG document", and
"Dead WG document"; the IESG states "Publication Requested", "In
Last Call", and "IESG Evaluation"
o IAB stream: "Active IAB Document", "Community Review", and "Sent
to the RFC Editor"
o IRTF stream: "Active RG Document", "In RG Last Call", "Awaiting
IRSG Reviews", "In IESG Review", "Sent to the RFC Editor", and
"Document on Hold Based On IESG Request"
o ISE stream: "Submission Received", "In ISE Review", "In IESG
Review", "Sent to the RFC Editor", and "Document on Hold Based On
IESG Request"
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o All streams: in addition to the above, the disposition states
"Approved", "RFC Published", and "Dead" are also included
An "update to an RFC" is the announcement of a newer RFC that updates
or obsoletes the base RFC, or an announcement of an errata posted for
the base RFC.
1.4. Expected user interactions
When a user wants to follow a group of drafts and/or RFCs, he or she
goes to the Datatracker and creates a new list. The requirements for
lists are given in Section 2.1. After a list is created, the user
has three ways that he or she might see when drafts and/or RFCs in
the list are updated:
o By going to the Datatracker page for the list (see Section 2.3)
o By subscribing to the Atom feed for the list (see Section 2.2.2)
in a feed reader that automatically fetches updates
o By subscribing to the mail stream for the list (see Section 2.2.3)
and reading the stream in their mail reader
1.5. Discussion of These Requirements
This document is being discussed on the datatracker-rqmts@ietf.org
mailing list. For more information, see
<https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/datatracker-rqmts>.
There will probably be virtual interim meetings to discuss this
document in early 2011.
2. Requirements for Tools Features
This section defines the requirements for the tool described earlier
in this document. The eventual tool, if implemented, may have more
features than are listed here; however, before this document is
finished, it should contain as many requirements as possible upon
which the IETF community can agree.
2.1. Lists
2.1.1. Requirement: Lists of drafts and RFCs can be large
An active IETF participant might want to follow the status of
hundreds of drafts and dozens of RFCs. For example, some ADs have
100 drafts in their area, and they may also want to follow drafts
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outside their area that affect documents in their area.
2.1.2. Requirement: Every Datatracker user can create a list
When a user gets a Datatracker account, that account comes with an
empty list pre-defined. The list can normally be modified only by
the owner of the account, although the Secretariat can also modify
the list as part of its support role for the Datatracker.
In order for this requirement to be met, it must be easy for any
community member to get a Datatracker account. Account setup must
not involve any direct action on the part of the Secretariat.
However, the Secretariat will be responsible for support of
Datatracker accounts (lost passwords, odd interactions, and so on),
so this addition of more Datatracker accounts will potentially
increase the amount of work the Secretariat must do.
The only person who can edit the contents of a private list is the
person who knows the password to the account with which the list is
associated.
2.1.3. Requirement: Read-only views of private lists can be made
visible to others
Some users will want to make available a read-only view of their
list. Each private list will have a URL that leads to the
Datatracker view of the list; that URL must be able to be safely
shared with others. In this case, "safely" means "will not help
others be able to edit the list". Similarly, the Atom feed
associated with a private list should be able to be safely shared
with others>
2.1.4. Requirement: The Datatracker must support optional publicly-
readable lists for WGs and Area Directors
It is common in the IETF for users to follow the work of an entire
WG, not just individual drafts and RFCs within a WG. It is also very
common that some work that is related to a WG happens outside the WG,
either in other WGs or as individual efforts. Many WG chairs monitor
this outside-the-WG activity for various reasons.
A smaller number of community members to follow an entire Area's
worth of topics. Again, these topics often happen within the WGs of
an area, but not always; for example, some topics related to the
Security Area happen in WGs in the Applications Area.
Because of this, it would be useful for community members to be able
to find a list which corresponds to the WGs or Areas in which they
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are interested. The WG lists could be maintained by the WG chairs;
the Area lists would likely be maintained by the ADs. Note that such
lists are not mandatory; for example, a WG chair might not choose to
maintain such a list for a WG whose topic is extremely broad.
Both Working Group chairs and Area Directors currently already have
Datatracker accounts, so fulfilling this requirement only involves
associating those accounts with the role that controls the list.
2.1.5. Requirement: Specifying the drafts and RFCs that are in a list
must be simple
When a user creates a new list, it must be easy to add individual
drafts and RFCs to the list. This could be done using the
Datatracker's current search facility, and simply adding a "add to
list" option for Further, when editing an existing list, it must be
easy to add additional drafts and RFCs, and it must be easy to remove
drafts and RFCs from a list.
2.1.6. Requirement: Adding groups of drafts to a list by attribute must
be simple
Drafts have many attributes, and some users might want to follow all
of the drafts that have a particular attribute. Some, but not all,
attributes have values that make sense in specifying lists. It
should be easy to add each of the following attributes when adding to
or editing a list:
o All drafts associated with an individual WG
o All drafts associated with all WGs in an individual Area
o All drafts with a particular responsible AD
o All drafts with a particular author
o All drafts with a particular document shepherd
o All drafts that have a reference to a particular RFC
o All drafts that have a reference to a particular draft
o All drafts that are referenced by a particular RFC
o All drafts that are referenced by a particular draft
o All drafts that contain a particular text string
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These attributes are dynamic, and thus the list of drafts that have a
particular attribute will change after the user adds that attribute
to a list. The Datatracker should update lists with dynamic
attributes as often as is sensible for the server environment, such
as once an hour or more.
Note that some of these attributes are derived by programs created by
the IETF Tools Team that parse drafts and are therefore inherently
not completely reliable.
2.1.7. Requirement: These extensions must not make the Datatracker take
up too many resources
Currently, the only state that the Datatracker keeps for its users is
a very small set of attributes assigned to a username-password pair.
The extensions described here will cause the Datatracker to need to
keep more information, namely lists. Each list might have additional
associated state as well. This could lead to the Datatracker needing
a larger amount of storage and other resources. When this document
is near completion, it would probably be good to list exactly which
new state will be kept on the Datatracker server.
In order to reduce the chance that these extensions would strain the
Datatracker, some sort of denial-of-service prevention should be used
when the extensions are added.
Culling presents a problem, however, for user-based lists that are
made public. The creator of a list might no longer be using it, but
others might be. Thus, it is likely that the Datatracker needs to be
be able to maintain lists long-term even if their creators are no
longer using them.
2.1.8. Requirement: Private information must not be exposed in lists
Any private information in the Datatracker must be excluded from any
displays of the lists or streams created in this document. This
private information includes private notes in the IESG balloting for
a draft, and probably other data that currently is restricted to
being seen by certain members of the IETF leadership.
2.2. Notifications
2.2.1. Requirement: Users can be notified when a draft changes status
Some users do not want to go to the Datatracker's display page to
find out when a draft or RFC has been updated. Instead, they want to
be notified immediately after the change. The Datatracker needs to
support this type of immediate notification, where "immediate" means
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"within an hour of a change to any draft or RFC in the list". This
requirement can be met with Atom feeds and mail streams, as described
in the next two sections.
The Datatracker might create a generic "notifications engine" that
can be used to generate the Atom feeds and mail streams. This engine
can then be used to later add other notification types, such as a
Jabber feed.
2.2.2. Requirement: Every list has Atom feeds associated with it
The list will have two Atom feeds that are generated from the changes
to the list: one for every change in status, and another for
significant change of status. Each Atom feed will have a stable URL
that can be used by feed readers.
Many IETF users are already using Atom feeds created by the IETF
Tools Team for individual drafts. Using the new feeds for lists
described here will allow them to have better selection capabilities
to reduce the number of feeds they need to follow.
2.2.3. Requirement: Every list has mail streams associated with it
A user can subscribe to two email streams that are generated from the
changes to the list: one for every change in status, and another for
significant change of status.
Note that the mail streams are for each change; they are not batched
(such as one message per day). Users who want less frequent but
batched notifications need to use the Atom feeds instead of the mail
streams.
2.2.4. Requirement: Notifications need to specify which list caused the
notification
Users might have feeds and/or subscriptions to multiple lists. In
order to disambiguate duplicate notifications from multiple lists,
the body of the message in the Atom feed or mail stream needs to say
which list generated the notification. (Ideally, a user who wants
notifications will make one list based on multiple lists, but if they
subscribe to multiple lists, this requirement will at least suggest
to them that they want to limit their overlapping subscriptions.)
2.3. Display in the Datatracker
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2.3.1. Requirement: Users can define how the rows are sorted in a
display
There are many ways that a user might want to see the Datatracker's
HTML view of a list. For example, a user might want to normally see
it in alphabetical order by the drafts' filenames and RFC numbers,
but after the user is of the net for a week, he or she might want to
see the list in order of changes of status so that those drafts and
RFCs changed recently appear at the top of the list.
The default is to first list the groups first in alphabetical order
by group name, then individual drafts in alphabetical order by draft
filename, with RFCs at the end. When displaying a list, the
Datatracker should allow easy sorting of the drafts with the
following collation orders:
o Alphabetical order by group name followed by individual drafts and
RFCs (default)
o Alphabetical by draft filename and RFC number
o Alphabetical by document title
o Alphabetical by associated WG
o Date of publication of current version of the document
o Date of most recent change of status of any type
o Date of most recent significant change of status
In displays, a particular draft or RFC should only included once; for
example, if someone manually adds draft-ietf-cuteacronym-sometopic to
his list and also specifies that all drafts from the "cuteacronym" WG
are included in the list, that draft should only appear once in the
display. The column saying which included list(s) contain this draft
helps alleviate this loss of information.
The user might also want to group the drafts using the groupings in
the list, such as "all drafts from this WG" and "all drafts that
contain this word in the title".
The Datatracker should save the last-chosen sorting for display with
the definition of the list.
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2.3.2. Requirement: Users can choose which attributes to display
There are many attributes that might be displayed, and different
users will have different information that they want to see. Also,
users will have different display technologies: someone might
normally use a web browser on a large screen, but at other times use
the browser on their phone.
Choosing which attributes should be displayed should be simple for
the user. The Datatracker should save the last-chosen set of
attributes for display with the definition of the list. The default
is to display is draft filename or RFC number, document title, date
of current draft or RFC publication date, status in stream or RFC
process, associated WG or RG, whether it was changed within the last
7 days, and included list(s) which contain this draft.
The Datatracker should support display of the following attributes:
o Draft filename
o Draft title
o Date of current draft
o Status in the IETF process
o Associated WG or RG
o Associated AD, if any
o Changed within the last 1 day
o Changed within the last 2 days
o Changed within the last 7 days
There is some leeway for how the Datatracker might display these
attributes. For example, the "changed within" attributes might be
shown with a check mark or a colored box.
2.3.3. Requirement: Users can flag drafts with dates in the future
When tracking drafts, some users want to be able to say "tell me if
this draft has not changes state by a particular date" such as when a
draft is starting a two-week last call or a draft author has promised
a new version by the end of the week. This feature gives the user a
"dashboard" style capability.
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For each draft in a list, the user should be able to set one date-
based deadline. When using the display version of the Datatracker,
if that date has passed and no change in status happened between the
time that the user set the deadline and the set date, the Datatracker
will highlight the deadline in red. It must also be easy to remove
these deadlines.
2.3.4. Requirement: Users can specify highlighting of drafts and RFCs
with recent changes
The Datatracker cannot easily keep track of when a user last looked
at the page for a particular list. Thus, it instead needs to let a
user say which range of dates they are most interested in. To that
end, the user needs to be able to easily specify the amount of time
they consider recent, either as "the past nnn hours", "the past nnn
days", or "since this particular date".
2.4. File Output
2.4.1. Requirement: Users can get their current list as a single file
Some users have their own tools for displaying and otherwise
processing lists of drafts and RFCs. To make this easier, users
should be able to get a machine-parsable file that has a well-known
format and syntax that contains all the data that was used to create
the current display. The order of the records in the file is not
important because it is assumed that the user's program will sort the
results themselves. All attributes will be included because it is
assumed that the user's programs will only deal with the ones the
care about.
When a list is marshaled into a data file, each record in the file
format represents a single draft or RFC. In a file, a particular
draft or RFC is only included once; for example, if someone manually
adds draft-ietf-cuteacronym-sometopic to his list and also specifies
that all drafts from the "cuteacronym" WG are included in the list,
that draft only appears once.
This feature will allow anyone to create mash-ups of their own and
create their own web sites based on the IETF data. This is
significantly easier than adding features to the Datatracker, and is
able to cater to narrower audiences.
3. IANA Considerations
None.
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4. Security Considerations
A tool for tracking the status of Internet Drafts and RFCs can affect
the privacy of its users. Someone could possibly determine relevant
information about a user if they knew what that user was tracking.
Web applications, particularly those that store data on a web server,
are a common source of security issues such as cross-site scripting
attacks. The tool described in this document might also use access
control for lists, and access control and authentication also cause
security issues if not implemented properly.
5. Acknowledgements
Ideas used in this document were contributed by Scott Bradner, Leslie
Daigle, Spencer Dawkins, Aaron Falk, Russ Housley, Tero Kivinen,
Barry Leiba, John Levine, Henrik Levkowetz, Kurtis Lindqvist, Andy
Malis, Ray Pelletier, Blake Ramsdell, Julian Reschke, Jim Schaad,
Yaron Sheffer, Robert Sparks, Andrew Sullivan, and Sean Turner.
6. Informative References
[ALTSTREAMS]
Hoffman, P., "Data Tracker States and Annotations for the
IAB, IRTF, and Independent Submission Streams",
draft-hoffman-alt-streams-tracker (work in progress),
September 2010.
[CHARTERTOOL]
Hoffman, P., "Requirements for a Working Group Charter
Tool", draft-ietf-genarea-charter-tool (work in progress),
October 2010.
[RFC2026] Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision
3", BCP 9, RFC 2026, October 1996.
[RFC4287] Nottingham, M., Ed. and R. Sayre, Ed., "The Atom
Syndication Format", RFC 4287, December 2005.
[WGSTATES]
Juskevicius, E., "Definition of IETF Working Group
Document States", draft-ietf-proto-wgdocument-states (work
in progress), October 2010.
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Appendix A. Possible Tracking of Other Documents
It is not at all clear if any of these will be a requirement, a later
requirement, or a non-requirement. Further, even if one or more of
these non-draft items is made a requirement, it is not clear whether
they will be included in the same lists with drafts. That is, if
tracking IANA registry changes are considered a requirement, it is
not clear whether a user would include the registries in a list that
also contains draft, or whether they would need to create two lists,
one for drafts and one for IANA registries.
A.1. Tracking WG Charter Changes
It will soon be easier to track changes in WG charters and
milestones; see [CHARTERTOOL] for more information. Someone
subscribing to the stream for a WG would be able to see each of these
changes. With the expected changes, the Datatracker would be able to
update WGs in a list without any polling.
A.2. Tracking IANA Registry Changes
Developers may need to get values from IANA registries for their
software/hardware implementations. They might want to know when the
registry changes, such as additional entries or updates to current
entries. Thus, being able to be notified when a registry changes
would be valuable to them.
Adding this functionality may be tricky for some registries. For
example, if a developer cared about DKIM signature tags, they would
have to subscribe to
<http://www.iana.org/assignments/dkim-parameters/> which (currently)
covers a handful of registries, all related to DKIM. Thus, a change
to the DKIM hash algorithms would trigger a message showing that the
registry had changed, even though the DKIM signature tags registry
had not.
A.3. Tracking Changes in the Liason Statement Directory
Users might want to know when a new liaison statement is sent by the
IETF, or when one is received by the IETF.
A.4. Tracking Changes in Documents Outside the IETF Sphere
Users might want to track documents that relate to IETF activities
but are produced by other standards development organizations (SDOs)
such as the W3C, the IEEE, the Unicode Consortium, the ITU, and
others. In order for the tracker to track these documents, it would
need to poll occasionally and possibly scrape listings from HTML.
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Appendix B. Some Known Open Issues
This list is mostly meant to remind the author of topics that need to
be updated in future versions of the document, and to spur readers to
think of even more open issues.
o When an AD agrees to sponsor an individual submission, does the
Datatracker consider that draft associated with the AD? If not,
that needs to be dealt with here.
o The format of the export file will be XML or JSON or tab-separated
fields in a text file. Regardless of the format chosen, a syntax
will need to be specified.
Appendix C. Ideas that Might Be Implemented Later
The following are ideas for the new tool that are not currently being
considered for the first round of development, but are being
documented for possible future use. Items here might move between
this list and the list of requirements that are expected to be in the
first round.
o The Datatracker could list all of the publicly-readable lists (or
certainly at least the ones associated with IETF activities), and
have links from WG pages in Datatracker to the publicly-readable
lists maintained by the WG chairs.
o Earlier versions of this draft had a requirement that lists needed
to be able to include other lists. While this may still be
desired, it was decided that implementing this in a safe and
understandable way would be too difficult. Later versions of the
Datatracker might include this feature.
o In public lists, it might be useful for someone to be able to
understand why particular drafts and/or groups are added.
Allowing the user who put together the list to add a comment field
would help someone else see the motivation.
o The Datatracker might cull lists if it seems that storing them on
the Datatracker is taking too many resources. The Datatracker can
periodically send mail to the user reminding them to delete lists
that are no longer needed.
o The normal Datatracker display could have a button to add a
particular draft to the user's personal list.
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o Allow each user to determine what "significant change in status"
is for the list they create. This could be done by a series of
check boxes for every possible status change.
o A list creator can add a list-level comment about who might be
interested in following the list.
o If the agendas for an upcoming meeting are scraped for draft
names, it would be possible to add an attribute to a draft that
lists that WG agenda(s) on which it appears.
o In the section on "Adding groups of drafts to a list by
attribute", add an attribute for "all drafts that are referenced
by any draft in a particular list".
o Make it possible to add all drafts that have a certain section to
a list (non-trivial IANA considerations, ASN.1 modules in
appendices, ...).
o Even though Atom feeds have been around for years, they are new to
many Internet users, and even experienced users only know how to
use them in limited ways. The Datatracker should have at least a
few paragraphs explaining how the Atom feeds that it provides can
be used in different tools such as dedicated feed readers, online
feed-display services, and so on.
Appendix D. Differences Between -04 and -05
Removed another "early" note from the intro.
Moved "later" requirements from the body of the document to the
appendix.
Moved the open issue of the file format into the open issues list.
Throughout, made RFC status part of what is in a list.
Author's Address
Paul Hoffman
VPN Consortium
Email: paul.hoffman@vpnc.org
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