Internet DRAFT - draft-algermissen-digital-product-life-cycle-model

draft-algermissen-digital-product-life-cycle-model







Network Working Group                                     J. Algermissen
Internet-Draft                     Jan Algermissen Solutions Engineering
Intended status: Informational                            March 03, 2019
Expires: September 4, 2019


                    Digital Product Life Cycle Model
         draft-algermissen-digital-product-life-cycle-model-00

Abstract

   This specification defines an abstract model for Digital Products and
   their relationships with each other in order to establish a basic
   abstraction on which the lifecycle of Digital Products and
   collaborations around them can be expressed.  In addition, this
   specification defines a number of message formats and hypermedia
   controls, to enable the creation of tools and application in the
   space of Digital Product Life Cycle Management.

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."

   This Internet-Draft will expire on September 4, 2019.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (c) 2019 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 Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of



Algermissen             Expires September 4, 2019               [Page 1]

Internet-DraAtmodel for digital product life cycle managemen  March 2019


   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the Simplified BSD License.

Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   2
   2.  Glossary  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   3
   3.  The Digital Product Life Cycle Model  . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   4.  Services  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   4
   5.  Execution Environment Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   6
   6.  Digital Product Composition Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   8
   7.  Product Documents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  10
   8.  Stage Sets  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  11
   9.  The Stage Set JSON Object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  12
   10. Delivery Fabrics  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
   11. Extension Resource Families . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  13
   12. Well Defined Execution Environment Variables  . . . . . . . .  13
   13. Example Implementations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
   14. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
   15. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  14
   16. References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  16
   Appendix A.  Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  18
   Appendix B.  Implementation Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  18
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  18

1.  Introduction

   A wide variety of applications exists that support the journey of
   developers and other collaborators around the lifecycle of digital
   products.

   The aim of this specification is to facilitate integration options
   between such tools and applications by providing a common abstraction
   and coordination protocols.

   The abstract model differentiates between the notion of a Digital
   Product and any system or infrastructure configurations and
   installations created to facilitate collaboration around such digital
   products.  A Digital Product in itself is purely abstract, primarily
   acting as a nexus for accountability and collaboration.

   Associated with Digital Products is a life cycle model that provides
   an abstraction of the individual phases in which a Digital Product
   lives to actually produce value.  Collaboration of various actors is
   also logically organised on the basis of these phases.

   Collaboration and value creation only becomes possible if
   corresponding tooling or infrastructure is provided beyond the



Algermissen             Expires September 4, 2019               [Page 2]

Internet-DraAtmodel for digital product life cycle managemen  March 2019


   intangible notion of a Digital Product.  For each of the life cycle
   phases a resource abstraction is defined in order to establish a
   model around which software can be created for creation and
   management of such life cycle specific resources.

   On top of this semantic foundation provided by these abstract models,
   this specification defines a number of message formats, hypermedia
   controls, and component roles that enable the creation of
   collaboration software systems and tools.

1.1.  Notational Conventions

   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.

2.  Glossary

   Throughout this specification the following terms are used with
   specific meaning as defined below:

   o  Resource Family: An abstaction of coordinated resources that
      support a specific kind of usecase, such as deploying and running
      a product in some infrastructure or performing build, test,
      packaging, and publishing of products.

   o  Resource Family Descriptor: A file or network message containing a
      description of a desired instance of a resource family, for
      example a stage set definition file.

   o  Resource Manager: A software system that processes resource family
      descritors and creates or updates infrastructure accordingly.
      Examples are the creation of CI/CD pipelines and associated test
      systems, the creation of collaboration tool spaces and channels.

   o  Resource Manager Client: A software system that interacts with a
      resource manager.

   o  Provisioning Strategy: The specifics of the implementation how a
      given resource manager chooses to turn the abstract resource
      family descriptor into actually created structures.  For example,
      a stage set resource manager could implement a strategy that puts
      all stage sets into a single account with shared runtimes and PaaS
      instances, or it could implement a strategy, where every processed
      stage set is provided an isolated environment.




Algermissen             Expires September 4, 2019               [Page 3]

Internet-DraAtmodel for digital product life cycle managemen  March 2019


      The following resource families are define by this specification:

      *  Product Management Environment (TBD)

      *  Stage Set

      *  Delivery Fabric (TBD)

      *  Operations Cockpit (TBD)

      *  Report Workbench (TBD)

3.  The Digital Product Life Cycle Model

   This specification differentiates the following Digital Products
   Lifecycle aspects:

   o  Journey Portfolio Management Model

   o  Product Management Model

   o  Product Composition Model

   o  Product Content Model

   o  Product Delivery Model

   o  Product Deployment Model

   o  Product Operations Model

4.  Services

   The Digital Product Life Cycle Model aims to facilitate the
   integration into existing Internet technology and thus uses existing
   specified semantics whenever possible.

   One of such integration points is the notion of _Service_, which
   refers to an abstract capability associated with an interaction
   protocol expectation.  This specification uses the term _Service_ in
   the exact same sense as it is used by the various specifications
   available through the IETF.

   Some relevant specifications are [RFC3232].  [RFC2782], [RFC6763].

   On the one hand services are used by capability providing software
   systems to advertise that they meet the contract associated with a
   given service name, or in other words, that the providing system



Algermissen             Expires September 4, 2019               [Page 4]

Internet-DraAtmodel for digital product life cycle managemen  March 2019


   meets the expectations of consuming systems of a given service.  On
   the other hand, services are used by consuming systems to express
   that they have certain protocol and capability expectations when
   interacting with a providing system.

   While services in most existing specifications are rather protocol
   focussed, the service notion seamlessly supports referring to
   capabilities that exist in more functional areas.  The following
   examples show services that illustrate the notion of _servciew_ as
   understood by this specification:

   'search', 'suggest', 'basket', 'ftp', 'postgres', 'smtp', 'http',
   'aws-dynamo', 'gcp-pubsub', 'google-maps',...

4.1.  Service Names

   Service names MUST conform to the syntax requirements stated in
   [RFC1034], meaning that service names MUST only consist of ASCII
   letters, digits, and hyphens and that they MUST NOT be longer than 15
   characters.

   Service names are case insensitive.

   TBD: Differentiate between standardized global services and context-
   based services

4.2.  Port Numbers

   Services MAY be assigned a port number, see [RFC3232] and
   https://www.iana.org/assignments/port-numbers

4.3.  Service Catalog

   In order to express dependencies of a product on one or more
   services, the list of services available in a given context must be
   known.  Systems that have the ability to manage dependencies SHOULD
   expose service catalogs that list the available services.

4.4.  The service-catalog Link Relation Type

   Links with the link relation type 'service-catalog' indicate that the
   target resource represents a service catalog.

4.5.  Service List Documents

   The canonical model for a service list document is a JSON [RFC8259]
   object.




Algermissen             Expires September 4, 2019               [Page 5]

Internet-DraAtmodel for digital product life cycle managemen  March 2019


   When serialized as a JSON document, that format is identified with
   the "application/vnd.ply.servicelist+json" media type.

4.5.1.  Syntax Example

   {
     "services" : [
       {
         "name" : "",
         "description" : "...",
         "docs" : [ "" , "" ]
       },
       {
         "name" : "",
         "description" : "...",
         "docs" : [ "" , "" ]
       }
    ]
   }


5.  Execution Environment Types

   Common to all software systems is the differentiation between
   something being developed and actually running it in a given context.
   The things being develop are inherently bound to the target type of
   execution environment.  This specification defines the notion of
   _Execution Environment Type_ in order to capture this property of
   developed software items.  An Execution Environment is anyting into
   which a developed software can be deployed to realize its
   capabilities in a given runtime environment.

   Examples of Execution Environment Types are the usual environments
   such as "Linux Operating System", "Docker", "AWS Lambda", "Java
   Application Server", "Oracle PL/SQL", but other possible runnable
   artefacts and Execution Environment Types are "Single Page
   Applications deployed to a CDN", "The configuration of an integration
   proxy", "A native mobile app deployed on a mobile phone".

5.1.  Execution Environment Type Definitions

   Execution Environment Types establish a contract between product
   component developers and processors of component deployments and
   developers need to understand this contract when they develop the
   component.  For example, part of this contract is the definition of
   how the well known environment variables are provided to the
   component at runtime.  Another part is how component artifacts must
   be published before or during deployment.



Algermissen             Expires September 4, 2019               [Page 6]

Internet-DraAtmodel for digital product life cycle managemen  March 2019


   The contract established by a given Execution Environment Type must
   be made availble to the users as Execution Environment Type
   Definitions and must convey the fopllowing information:

5.1.1.  Name

   The identifier and name of the execution environment type.

5.1.2.  Description

   A detailed description of the contract in a way that is sufficient
   for the user to develop components and publish them.  Specifically
   this MUST include

   o  What is the expected artifact build and packaging format?

   o  What is the expected runtime behaviour (TBD: explain)

   o  What are the startup and shutdown constraints

   o  What are the deployment parameters that MUST, SHOULD, or MAY be
      passed as party of deployment (eg cmount CPU)

   o  How are the environment variables passed to the component at
      runtime?

   o  How are secrets pertaining to individual variable values provided?

   o  Anything else the developer needs to know the execution
      environment will expect from her software.

5.2.  Execution Environment Variables

   TBD

5.3.  Execution Environment Type Catalog

   Systems that support the deployment of software artifacts SHOULD
   provide an execution evironment type catalog to inform client systems
   about the supported execution environments.

5.4.  The 'execenv-catalog' Link Relation Type

   Links with the link relation type 'execenv-catalog' indicate that the
   target resource represents an execution environment type catalog.






Algermissen             Expires September 4, 2019               [Page 7]

Internet-DraAtmodel for digital product life cycle managemen  March 2019


5.5.  Execution Environment Type List Documents

   TBD

   The canonical model for an execution environment document is a JSON
   [RFC8259] object.

   When serialized as a JSON document, that format is identified with
   the "application/vnd.ply.execenvlist+json" media type.

5.5.1.  Syntax Example

   {
     "execenvs" : [
       {
         "name" : "",
         "description" : "...",
         "docs" : [ "" , "" ] },
       {
         "name" : "",
         "description" : "...",
         "docs" : [ "" , "" ]
       }
    ]
   }


6.  Digital Product Composition Model

   A digital product is understood to consist of components.  Components
   can have dependencies on services.  Services are either backing
   systems like databases or they are external services, such as a
   search API, a backend IT system, or another product in the sense of
   'product' used in this specification.

   Components can share dependencies that are specific to a product, but
   no two products may share the same service instances.














Algermissen             Expires September 4, 2019               [Page 8]

Internet-DraAtmodel for digital product life cycle managemen  March 2019


       +-----------------------------------+
       |              Product              |
       |              ~~~~~~~              |
       |              -name                |
       |                                   |
       |  +-----------+     +-----------+  |                +-------+
       |  | Component |     | Component +--+-- implements ->|Service|
       |  | ~~~~~~~~~ |     | ~~~~~~~~~ |  |                +-------+
       |  | -name     |     | -name     |  |
       |  | -type     |     | -type     |  |
       |  +----+-+----+     +-----+-----+  |
       |       | |                |        |
       |       | +----------------+        |
       |       |                  |        |
       |       V                  V        |
       |  +----------+       +----------+  |
       |  |Dependency|       |Dependency|  |
       |  |-name     |       |-name     |  |
       |  +-----+----+       +----+-----+  |
       |        |                 |        |
       +--------+-----------------+--------+
                |                 |
                V                 V
            +-------+         +-------+
            |Service|         |Service|
            +-------+         +-------+


6.1.  Product

   TBD

6.1.1.  Product Name Attribute

   Product objects MUST exhibit a "name" property with a string literal
   value which conforms to the syntax requirements for DNS labels.  The
   labels must follow the rules for ARPANET host names.  They must start
   with a letter, end with a letter or digit, and have as interior
   characters only letters, digits, and hyphen.  There are also some
   restrictions on the length.  Labels must be 63 characters or less
   ([RFC2181]).

6.2.  Component








Algermissen             Expires September 4, 2019               [Page 9]

Internet-DraAtmodel for digital product life cycle managemen  March 2019


6.2.1.  Component Name Attribute

   Component objects MUST exhibit a "name" property with a string
   literal value which conforms to the syntax requirements for DNS
   labels.  The labels must follow the rules for ARPANET host names.
   They must start with a letter, end with a letter or digit, and have
   as interior characters only letters, digits, and hyphen.  There are
   also some restrictions on the length.  Labels must be 63 characters
   or less ([RFC2181]).

6.2.2.  Component Type Attribute

   Components have an Execution Environment Type indicated by the 'type'
   attribute.

6.3.  Dependency

   TBD

   Dependencies are named to differentiate between them.  This makes it
   possible for a product to exhibit one or more dependencies on the
   same service.

6.4.  Service Implementation

   When products expose capabilities for use by other products, they
   must expose them in order for other products to consume them as
   dependencies.

7.  Product Documents

   In order to communicate product and product structure information
   between systems, this specification defines a syntax for product
   documents.  In addition to the structural product information,
   product documents contain syntax elements that enable the
   coordination between resource managers and resource manager clients.

   Resource managers SHOULD use these syntax elements to embed discovery
   information into product data to enable resource manager clients to
   determine where to send product data- or resource descriptor updates
   and where to retrieve update status information.

   Resource manager clients SHOULD leverage the discovery elements as
   much as possible and understand product documents as the primary
   means of coordination between resource managers and clients.

   Focussing resource manager client development on the semantics of
   product documents and other hypermedia elements defined in this



Algermissen             Expires September 4, 2019              [Page 10]

Internet-DraAtmodel for digital product life cycle managemen  March 2019


   specification enables the creation of generic user agents for any
   resource manager implementation.  In other words, resource manager
   clients SHOULD not rely on specific aspects of a certain resource
   manager instance to avoid coupling the client to the original design
   of that specific manager.

7.1.  The Product JSON Object

   The canonical model for a product document is a JSON [RFC8259]
   object.

   When serialized as a JSON document, that format is identified with
   the "application/vnd.ply.product+json" media type.

7.2.  A YAML-formatted example of a product model


   name: search
   dependencies:
     - name: index
       service: solr
     - name: config
       service: postgres
   components:
     - name: importer
       dependencies: ["index","config"]
     - name: searcher
       dependencies: ["index"]
       implements: ["opensearch","my-suggest"]



8.  Stage Sets

   Stage Sets are a resource family that enables the creation of sets of
   related stages in a given infrastructure providing system.  Resource
   Managers that accepts the processing of stage sets, are expected to
   create and configure infrastructure accoring to the desired target
   state as abstractly expressed in the processed state set.

   Many stage sets can be defined for any given product and different
   resource managers can be chosen to be responsible for any number of
   such stage sets.

   For example, one might choose (1) to apply one resource manager to a
   public cloud provider for managing the main delivery stages there,
   (2) to apply another resource manager to an on-premise infrastructure
   and manage individual, short lived, per-feature branch test stages in



Algermissen             Expires September 4, 2019              [Page 11]

Internet-DraAtmodel for digital product life cycle managemen  March 2019


   a cheaper environment, and (3), developers could use a local resource
   manager to manage local development stages and generate Docker
   Compose-based running systems from them.

   Therefore, stage sets enable a fully decentralized management of sets
   of related stages with, propably independent, collaborators or
   software systems.

   By allowing unrelated resource managers to manage unrelated sets of
   stages the approach also provides a clean path for migrating from one
   resource manager to another, for example, when switching
   infrastructure providers.

8.1.  A Note on Provider-Coupling

   In order for resource managers to instantiate the necessary
   infrastructure (for example network) and PaaS-level structures (for
   example databases), and in order to perform component artifact
   deployment, infrastructure provider specific services and their
   configuration parameters need to be part of stage set definitions.
   The notion of stage sets does not aim to abstract from the specifcs
   of the chosen target infrastructure beyond maybe reducing its
   complexity by providing useful named predefined configurations (aka
   "T-shirt sizes").

9.  The Stage Set JSON Object

   The canonical model for a Stage Set document is a JSON [RFC8259]
   object.

   When serialized as a JSON document, that format is identified with
   the "application/vnd.ply.stageset+json" media type.

9.1.  A YAML-formatted example of a stage set model

















Algermissen             Expires September 4, 2019              [Page 12]

Internet-DraAtmodel for digital product life cycle managemen  March 2019


   name: myset
   'product-ref': ply://acme/search
   budget: '66474-gghk-88733/00'
   'status-href': http://example.org/acme/search/stagesets/status
   stages:
     - name: dev
       criticality: work
       dependencyInstances:
         - name: mydb
           parameters:
             - name: foo
               value: bar
       componentDeployments:
         - name: searcher
           artifact: myrepo.example.com/images/foo:1
           dns: www.example.org
     - name: prod
     ...


10.  Delivery Fabrics

   TBD: Describe delivery fabrics and their documents analog to stage
   sets.

11.  Extension Resource Families

   This specifications defines two resource families, stage sets and
   delivery fabrics.

   New resource families can be defined outside of this specification as
   extensions.  The following SHOULD be supported by such extensions:

   TBD: What can be required from extensions to allow for some generic
   tools support?

12.  Well Defined Execution Environment Variables

   TBD Define the list of common environment variables for execution
   environments

   o  PLY_LOC_STAGE

   o  PLY_LOC_REGION

   o  PLY_LOC_SYSTEM

   o  ...



Algermissen             Expires September 4, 2019              [Page 13]

Internet-DraAtmodel for digital product life cycle managemen  March 2019


13.  Example Implementations

   TBD

14.  Security Considerations

   TBD

15.  IANA Considerations

   This specification defines new Internet media types [RFC6838].

15.1.  application/vnd.ply.product+json

   o  Type name: application

   o  Subtype name: vnd.ply.product+json

   o  Required parameters: None

   o  Optional parameters: None; unrecognized parameters should be
      ignored

   o  Encoding considerations: Same as [RFC8259]

   o  Security considerations: see Section 5 of this document

   o  Interoperability considerations: None

   o  Published specification: TBD (this document)

   o  Applications that use this media type: HTTP

   o  Fragment identifier considerations: Same as for application/json
      ([RFC8259])

   o  Additional information:

   o  Deprecated alias names for this type: n/a

      *  Magic number(s): n/a

      *  File extension(s): n/a

      *  Macintosh file type code(s): n/a

   o  Person and email address to contact for further information: Jan
      Algermissen algermissen@acm.org [1]



Algermissen             Expires September 4, 2019              [Page 14]

Internet-DraAtmodel for digital product life cycle managemen  March 2019


   o  Intended usage: COMMON

   o  Restrictions on usage: None.

   o  Author: Jan Algermissen algermissen@acm.org [2]

   o  Change controller: IESG

15.2.  application/vnd.ply.product+yaml

   TBD

15.3.  application/vnd.ply.servicelist+json

   TBD

15.4.  application/vnd.ply.servicelist+yaml

   TBD

15.5.  application/vnd.ply.execenvlist+json

   TBD

15.6.  application/vnd.ply.execenvlist+yaml

   TBD

15.7.  application/vnd.ply.stageset+json

   TBD

15.8.  application/vnd.ply.stageset+yaml

   TBD

15.9.  The ply URI scheme

   TBD

15.10.  The service-catalog link relation

   TBD








Algermissen             Expires September 4, 2019              [Page 15]

Internet-DraAtmodel for digital product life cycle managemen  March 2019


15.11.  The execenv-catalog link relation

16.  References

16.1.  Normative References

   [RFC1034]  Mockapetris, P., "Domain names - concepts and facilities",
              STD 13, RFC 1034, DOI 10.17487/RFC1034, November 1987,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc1034>.

   [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/info/rfc2119>.

   [RFC2181]  Elz, R. and R. Bush, "Clarifications to the DNS
              Specification", RFC 2181, DOI 10.17487/RFC2181, July 1997,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2181>.

   [RFC3232]  Reynolds, J., Ed., "Assigned Numbers: RFC 1700 is Replaced
              by an On-line Database", RFC 3232, DOI 10.17487/RFC3232,
              January 2002, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc3232>.

   [RFC6838]  Freed, N., Klensin, J., and T. Hansen, "Media Type
              Specifications and Registration Procedures", BCP 13,
              RFC 6838, DOI 10.17487/RFC6838, January 2013,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6838>.

   [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/info/rfc8174>.

   [RFC8259]  Bray, T., Ed., "The JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) Data
              Interchange Format", STD 90, RFC 8259,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC8259, December 2017,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8259>.

16.2.  Informative References

   [RFC2782]  Gulbrandsen, A., Vixie, P., and L. Esibov, "A DNS RR for
              specifying the location of services (DNS SRV)", RFC 2782,
              DOI 10.17487/RFC2782, February 2000,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2782>.

   [RFC6763]  Cheshire, S. and M. Krochmal, "DNS-Based Service
              Discovery", RFC 6763, DOI 10.17487/RFC6763, February 2013,
              <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6763>.




Algermissen             Expires September 4, 2019              [Page 16]

Internet-DraAtmodel for digital product life cycle managemen  March 2019


16.3.  URIs

   [1] mailto:algermissen@acm.org

   [2] mailto:algermissen@acm.org














































Algermissen             Expires September 4, 2019              [Page 17]

Internet-DraAtmodel for digital product life cycle managemen  March 2019


Appendix A.  Acknowledgements

   Thanks to TBD for their comments.

Appendix B.  Implementation Notes

   TBD

Author's Address

   Jan Algermissen
   Jan Algermissen Solutions Engineering

   EMail: algermissen@acm.org
   URI:   http://algermissen.io




































Algermissen             Expires September 4, 2019              [Page 18]