Clout

Introducing the cloud topology (“clou” + “t”) representation language, which is, simply put, a straightforward and rather generic graph database stored as “agnostic raw data”, in YAML, JSON, XML, or CBOR. By default it will be in YAML.

Clout functions as the intermediary format for your deployments. As an analogy, consider a program written in the C language. First, you must compile the C source into machine code for your hardware architecture. Then, you link the compiled object, together with various libraries, into a deployable executable for a specific target platform. Clout is the compiled object in this analogy.

If you only care about the final result then you won’t see the Clout at all. However, the decoupling allows for a more powerful toolchain. For example, some tools might change your Clout after the initial compilation (to scale out, to optimize, to add platform hooks, debugging features, etc.) and then you just need to “re-link” in order to update your deployment. This can happen without requiring you to update your original source design. It may also possible to “de-compile” some cloud deployments so that you can generate a Clout without any TOSCA “source code”.

Design Principles

Clout is essentially a big, unopinionated, implementation-specific dump of vertexes and the edges between them with un-typed, non-validated properties.

In itself Clout is an unremarkable format. Think of it as a way to gather various deployment specifications for disparate technologies in one place while allowing for the relationships (edges) between entities to be specified and annotated. That’s the topology.

Clout is not supposed to be human-readable or human-manageable. The idea is to use tools (Clout frontends and processors) to deal with its complexity. For example, with Puccini you can use just a little bit of TOSCA to generate a single big Clout file that describes a complex Kubernetes service mesh.

Rule #1 of Clout is that everything and the kitchen sink should be in one Clout file. Really, anything goes: specifications, configurations, metadata, annotations, source code, documentation, and even text-encoded binaries. (The only exception might be that security certificates and keys are best stored in a separate vault.)

Storage

Orchestrators may choose to store Clout opaquely, as is, in a key-value database or filesystem. This could work well because cloud deployments change infrequently: often all that’s needed is to retrieve a Clout, parse and lookup data, and possibly update a TOSCA attribute and store it again. Iterating many Clouts in sequence this way could be done quickly enough even for large environments. Simple solutions are often best.

That said, it could also make sense to store Clout data in a graph database. This would allow for sophisticated queries, using languages such GraphQL and Gremlin, as well as localized transactional updates. This approach could be especially useful for highly composable and dynamic environments in which Clouts combine together to form larger topologies and even relate to data coming from other systems.

Graph databases are quite diverse in features and Clout is very flexible, so one schema will not fit all. Puccini instead comes with examples: see storing in Neo4j and storing in Dgraph.

Structure

Note that all map keys in Clout must be strings. This is in order to ensure widest compatibility with programming languages and implementations.

version (string)

Must be “1.0” to conform with this document.

metadata (map of string to anything)

General metadata for the whole topology. It may include information about which frontend or processor generated the Clout file, a timestamp, etc.

properties (map of string to anything)

General implementation-specific properties for the whole topology.

The difference between metadata and properties is a matter of convention. Generally, properties should be used for data that is implementation-specific while metadata should be used for tooling. It is understood that this distinction might not always be clear and thus you should not treat the two areas differently in terms of state management.

vertexes (map of string to Vertex)

It is very important that you do not treat the keys of this map as data, for example as the unique name of a vertex. If you need a “name” for the vertex, it should be a property within the vertex. The vertex map keys are an internal implementation detail of Clout.

The reason for this is critical to Clout’s intended use. The vertex key is used only as a way to map the topology internally within an instance of Clout. More specifically, it is used for the targetID field in an edge so that the topology can graphed.

But a Clout processor may very well transform a Clout file and modify the topology. This could involve adding new vertexes and edges or moving them around, for example to optimize a topology, to heal a broken implementation, to scale out an overloaded system, etc. In doing so it may regenerate these IDs. These IDs need only be unique to one specific Clout file, not generally.

If you do need to lookup a vertex by, say, its name property, then the correct way to do so is to iterate through all vertexes and look for the first vertex that has that particular name. Indeed, it is reasonable for Clout parsers to entirely hide these IDs from the user and perhaps represent the vertex map as a list.

Vertex

metadata (map of string to anything)

The convention is that each application will have its own key under metadata. Often you’ll find information here about what kind of vertex this is, e.g. a TOSCA node:

metadata:
  puccini:
    kind: NodeTemplate
    version: "1.0"

properties (map of string to anything)

Implementation-specific properties for the vertex. For example, a TOSCA NodeTemplate would have these:

artifacts: {}
attributes: {}
capabilities: {}
description: ""
directives: []
interfaces: {}
metadata: {}
name: "my-node-template"
properties: {}
requirements: []
types: {}

edgesOut (list of Edge)

Clout edges are directional, though you may choose to semantically ignore the direction. The edges are stored in the source vertex, which is why this field is named edgesOut.

As a convenience, Clout parsers may very well add an in-memory edgesIn field, which would also be a list of edges, after mapping the targetID fields of all edges to vertexes, or otherwise provide a tool for looking up edges for which a certain vertex is a target.

Edge

metadata (map of string to anything)

Often you’ll find information here about what kind of edge this is, e.g. a TOSCA relationship:

metadata:
  puccini:
    kind: Relationship
    version: "1.0"

properties (map of string to anything)

Implementation-specific properties for the edge, e.g. for a TOSCA relationship:

attributes: {}
capability: "socket"
description: ""
interfaces: {}
name: "plug"
properties: {}
types: {}

targetID (string)

The key in the vertexes map to which this edge is the target.

Note that there is no need for a sourceID because the edge is already located in the edgesOut field of its source vertex. Clout parsers may very well add such a field for convenience.

Also, Clout parsers may do the ID lookup internally, provide direct access to the source and target vertexes, and hide the targetID field.

Values

A common feature in many Clout use cases is the inclusion of values that are meant to be “coerced” at runtime. Coercion could include evaluating an expression containing functions, testing for validity of the value by applying functions, calling a conversion function, etc.

Clout does not enforce a notation for such coercible values, however we do suggest a convention. Puccini comes with tools to help you parse according to this notation and to perform coercion using JavaScript.

The convention assumes that a value is a map with at least one and only one of the following fields:

• $primitive: This is an ARD literal value (boolean, integer, float, string, list, map, etc.), or a special primitive type expressed with an extended map notation.
• $list: This is an ARD list of coercible values (recursive).
• $map: This is an ARD list of map entries (not a map!), in which each entry is a coercible value (recursive) with the addition of a $key field, which is itself also a coercible value (recursive). Note that a $map can be the result of either a map type or a struct (e.g. a complex data type in TOSCA). For structs, see fields in $meta below.
• $functionCall: This is a function call.

Values may also have the following optional fields:

• $meta: a map with metadata about the value (see below)
• $converter: a $functionaCall called after coersion is completed to convert the value to anything else

For special primitive types $primitive is a map with fields specific to that type as well as the following optional fields:

• $string: textual representation of the value for human-readability, comparison, sorting, etc.
• $number: numeric representation of the value (float or integer) for comparison, sorting, etc.
• $originalString: if the value was parsed from a string then this would be that string
• $comparer: a $functioncall value for comparisons, which receives two arguments and returns 0 if equal, -1 if the first argument is greater, and 1 if the second argument is greater

$functionCall is a map with the following required fields:

• name: a string representing the name of the function
• arguments: a list of coercible values (can be an empty list but not null)

It may also have the follow optional fields for debugging information:

• path: a string representing a semantic path within the source document (implementation-specific)
• url: a string representing the URL of the source document
• row: an integer representing the row within the source document
• column: an integer representing the column within the source document

$meta is a map with the following fields, all of which are optional:

• type: name of the value’s type
• element: meta (recursive) for $list elements
• key: meta (recursive) for $map keys, if not a struct
• value: meta (recursive) for $map values, if not a struct
• fields: a map of field names to their meta (recursive), for $map structs
• validators: a list of $functionCall which accept the value as their first argument, all of which must return true for the value to be valid (logical “and”)
• description: a human-readable description of the variable to which this value is assigned
• typeDescription: a human-readable description of the value’s type
• localDescription: a human-readable description of the value itself
• metadata: a map of strings associated with the variable to which this value is assigned
• typeMetadata: a map of strings associated with the value’s type
• localMetadata: a map of strings associated with the value itself

Example (generated from this TOSCA example):

lowercase_string_map:
  $map:
    - $key:
        $primitive: greeting
      $primitive: Hello
    - $key:
        $functionCall:
          arguments:
            - $primitive: recip
            - $primitive: ient
          column: 9
          name: tosca.function.concat
          path: topology_template.node_templates["data"].properties["lowercase_string_map"]["concat:¶  - recip¶  - ient"]
          row: 194
          url: file:/Depot/Projects/RedHat/puccini/examples/tosca/data-types.yaml
      $primitive: Puccini
  $meta:
    type: map
    key:
      type: LowerCase
      typeDescription: Lowercase string
      validators:
        - $functionCall:
            arguments:
              - $primitive: '[a-z]*'
            column: 9
            name: tosca.constraint.pattern
            path: topology_template.node_templates["data"].properties["lowercase_string_map"]
            row: 194
            url: file:/Depot/Projects/RedHat/puccini/examples/tosca/data-types.yaml
    value:
      type: string