Re: [netmod] entity naming question

[Juergen Schoenwaelder <[e-mail]>]

On Fri, Aug 26, 2016 at 10:53:38AM +0200, Martin Bjorklund wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> It seems that some people prefer the term 'hardware' instead of
> 'entity' for things that are ... hardware.
> 
> Should we make this change in the document?  Specifically, the
> top-level node 'entity' would then be renamed to 'hardware'.  Probably
> other changes as well, but we can start with this one.

Well, 'hardware' would equate 'physical entity' but not 'entity'. ;-)

I agree that the ENTITY-MIB terminology is generally confusing (except
for those who got used to it). Changing the nomenclature will be a
bigger thing that just renaming the top-level, the 'physical-entity'
would likely become a 'component', e.g.

module: ietf-hardware
   +--ro hardware-state
   |  +--ro last-change?       yang:date-and-time
   |  +--ro component* [name]
   |     +--ro name                  string
   |     +--ro class?                identityref
   :
   :
   +--rw hardware
      +--rw component* [name]
         +--rw name                  string
         :

and there are more 'entity' words to replace (feature names plus many
edits in the texts). I believe it is worth to move to a terminology
that is far easier to understand and use; as long as the relationship
to the old MIB modules is clearly documented we are fine I think.

/js

PS: We had a discussion in a separate thread whether base identities
    of identities defined in IANA module should not be defined in the
    IANA modules themself; this allows reuse by just importing the
    IANA module. Perhaps this applies here as well.
    

-- 
Juergen Schoenwaelder           Jacobs University Bremen gGmbH
Phone: [phone]         Campus Ring 1 | 28759 Bremen | Germany
Fax:   [phone]         <http://www.jacobs-university.de/>