0011 Managing Referenceables¶

Referenceables can have chains of related feedback and additional knowledge attached to them. The following types help a metadata manager to process these collections of elements more efficiently.

LatestChange¶

The LatestChange classification is a convenience mechanism to indicate where the last change occurred. Components that are monitoring Referenceables can use the open metadata events related to classifications to maintain a complete picture of the Referenceable.

Template¶

The Template classification indicates that a Referenceable is a good element be used as a template when creating a new element of the same type. There is no restriction on using Referenceables without this classification as templates. The Template classification is simply a useful marker to enable templates to be found.

SourcedFrom¶

When one Referenceable is created by using another Referencable as a template, the qualifiedName must be changed in the new Referenceable to give it a unique name - often the displayName changes, too. This makes it hard to identify which Referenceables have been created from a template.

The SourcedFrom relationship is used to show the provenance of the information from the template. This is useful to help trace where information has come from and to help understand any potential impact cause by a change to the template if this change also needs to be made to the elements that were copied from it.