SORT BY:

LIST ORDER
THREAD
AUTHOR
SUBJECT


SEARCH

IPS HOME


    [Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

    Re: iSCSI: editorial rewrite not needed



    
    David,
    
    Swapping 5 and 6 is not a major issue. However I have to object to the
    recovery overview.
    It is already contained in 6 itself and in 2.
    
    And I have to stand by John's comment about the lateness of your comments.
    It is disappointing that you got to this that late - and most of your
    comments refer to text that was there
    for a long time.
    
    Julo
    
    
    
    
                                                                                                                                                
                          Black_David@emc.c                                                                                                     
                          om                       To:       John Hufferd/San Jose/IBM@IBMUS                                                    
                          Sent by:                 cc:       ips@ece.cmu.edu                                                                    
                          owner-ips@ece.cmu        Subject:  iSCSI: editorial rewrite not needed                                                
                          .edu                                                                                                                  
                                                                                                                                                
                                                                                                                                                
                          07/09/2002 09:44                                                                                                      
                          AM                                                                                                                    
                          Please respond to                                                                                                     
                          Black_David                                                                                                           
                                                                                                                                                
                                                                                                                                                
    
    
    
    John,
    
    My original text was:
    
    Global Editorial comment: Both the login (4) and error handling (6)
    sections
    feel like one of those old Adventure mazes of twisty little passages - all
    the
    details seem to be there, for the most part they're correct, but it's very
    hard
    to get the proverbial "big picture" of how everything fits together, in
    terms
    of how the various mechanisms work with each other and how they accomplish
    the overall functionality.  Both of these could use overview sections
    describing
    how the functionality breaks down into the pieces described in the
    subsections
    and how they fit together.  Swapping the order of Sections 5 and 6 would
    also
    be a good idea so that the discussion of Error Handling and Recovery comes
    before the state machine descriptions that contain a lot of the details of
    how errors are handled.  For error handling, moving Section 6.13 to the
    front of Section 6 would help organize the Section better, and care should
    be
    taken to define or replace terms like "restart login" and "recovery R2T"
    that are currently used without definitions.
    
    > I disagree with the editorial rewrite, especially at this late state.  If
    > they were important that should have been brought up earlier.
    
    I fail to see how you got from my original text whose primary request was
    for "overview sections describing ..." to "editorial rewrite", so I think
    you're seriously over-reacting.  Concerns about comprehensibility have
    been brought up on the list in the past.
    
    > We should
    > not be discussing editorial style, but whether we have correctly
    specified
    > the protocol.
    
    This isn't about "editorial style", but rather whether the specification
    is comprehensible to an implementer who picks it up from scratch without
    the benefit of this group's email discussions, short term memory, etc.
    
    > We have already changed it a couple of times, and you are
    > now wanting it changed again.  This is a very big spec, and each time we
    > make changes to pretty up the document, the more that is needed, and
    > someone else has another preference.
    
    If the spec has problems, Working Group Last Call is the point in
    time to find and fix them, and if that takes serious effort, c'est la vie.
    I'm prepared to listen to arguments that the spec is sufficiently
    comprehensible as to need no editorial changes, but I'm not inclined to
    assign them a great deal of credibility at this juncture.
    
    > It is already better then most of the
    > other IETF specs.  I think this causes a needless delay.
    
    I disagree and take exception to the view that iSCSI
    is needlessly being held to a higher standard.  The need for a
    comprehensible spec is real, and that is not a higher standard
    than other IETF specs are generally held to, although there are
    some that have gotten away - IKE/ISAKMP and the related keying
    portions of IPsec are an example that we are unfortunately
    familiar with.  It should not take an iSCSI guru with a secret
    decoder ring to unscramble how the protocol works even if all
    the interacting pieces are correctly specified somewhere in the
    document.
    
    On further reflection, I think that an overview section on error
    handling in the current Section 6 plus swapping the order of Section 5
    and Section 6 probably removes the need to tease apart the initiator
    and target state machine specifications in the current Section 5
    (my comments E.80 and E.81).  That should reduce the amount of work
    required provided that the overview text for error handling is well-
    written.
    
    Thanks,
    --David
    ---------------------------------------------------
    David L. Black, Senior Technologist
    EMC Corporation, 42 South St., Hopkinton, MA  01748
    +1 (508) 249-6449            FAX: +1 (508) 497-8018
    black_david@emc.com       Mobile: +1 (978) 394-7754
    ---------------------------------------------------
    
    
    
    
    


Home

Last updated: Thu Jul 11 01:19:00 2002
11258 messages in chronological order