Plan Types

Within the N1 Service Provisioning System software mode there are two types of plans:

• Composite plans, which contain only subplans.

• Simple plans, which contain a collection of simple steps, but which cannot call other plans.

The XML Schema enforces these restrictions so that you can either have a top-level plan which only calls other subplans, or you can have a simple plan with various simple steps but no calls to other subplans. The distinction is important because the steps contained in a simple plan all execute on the same set of target hosts, whereas the steps of a composite plan may execute on different sets of target hosts, using one set of target hosts for each simple plan recursively contained in the composite plan.