Subject: [netmod] Terminology => YANG module versus YANG data model versus YANG model : please don't use "YANG model" any longer

From: Benoit Claise <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2016 10:04:34 +0100

Dear all,

Reviewing some NETMOD documents these days, I realized that we're 
sometimes not consistent regarding terminology: YANG module, YANG data 
model, YANG model.

Example:
All three can be found in 
https://www.ietf.org/id/draft-ietf-netmod-rfc6020bis-11.txt and 
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6244
YANG data model and YANG module can be found in 
https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-netmod-yang-metadata-03 and 
https://www.ietf.org/id/draft-ietf-netmod-yang-json-07.txt

Asking advice from the YANG doctors, here are their conclusions:

    RFC 6020 defines:

        o  data model: A data model describes how data is represented and
           accessed.

        o  module: A YANG module defines a hierarchy of nodes that can be
           used for NETCONF-based operations.  With its definitions and the
           definitions it imports or includes from elsewhere, a module is
           self-contained and "compilable".

    Both terms 'YANG data model' and 'YANG module' mean slightly
    different things and both are valid. (I think a larger YANG data model
    can consist of multiple YANG modules and YANG submodules, RFC 7407
    would be an example.)

    The term 'YANG models' is likely simply an abbreviation of 'YANG data
    models' and we could get rid of this by not using an abbreviation.

Let's apply this rule from now: no more "YANG models".

Regards, Benoit