Transaction support in network element management APIs plays a key role in enabling automation. Network elements with the proper support of transactional management, such as by the proper implementation of NETCONF and YANG APIs, can be seamlessly integrated into network management systems or orchestrators such as NSO, enabling automation and network wide transactions, without the need of special purpose adapters. Hence, a proper understanding of the underlying features of transactional management is key to ensuring a proper implementation of NETCONF and YANG on the network element side, which contributes directly to the quality of automation that can be achieved in the network.
In this workshop, we talk about what transactional management is, we highlight some of the issues facing automation, and management applications in general, when it comes to improper support of transactions and what solutions exist to fix systems that break the transactional behavior that NETCONF is built around. We also show how ConfD can be used to convert a non-transactional management system to a transactional one.
