YANG2UML: Bijective transformation and simplification of YANG to UML

Abstract

Specifically designed to exchange configuration information from a management platform to network components, the XML-based NETCONF protocol has become widely used. In combination with NETCONF, YANG is the corresponding protocol that defines the associated data structures, supporting virtually all network configuration protocols. YANG itself is a semantically rich language, which - in order to facilitate familiarization with the relevant subject - is often visualized using UML to involve other experts or developers and to support them by their daily work (writing applications which make use of YANG/NETCONF). To support this process, this paper presents an novel approach to optimize and simplify YANG data models, as current solutions tend to produce very complex UML diagrams. Therefore, we have (i) defined a bidirectional mapping of YANG to UML, (ii) developed a strategy to reduce the numbers of objects, and (iii) created a tool that renders the created UML diagrams, closing the gap between technically improved data models and their human readability.