Actor Profile¶
An actor profile represents a person, a group of people, or an automated process operating in the open metadata ecosystem. It provides the identity, capabilities and purpose behind the userId that arrives with a request.
Metadata repositories run in a secure mode, so every request carries a security identity and every element records the userId that created or last updated it. On its own, a userId is just a string. The actor profile is what turns it into someone - or something - the organization knows about.
Types of profile¶
- A personal profile describes an individual.
- A team profile describes a group of people.
- An IT profile describes a piece of IT infrastructure or an automated process.
Profiles, identities and roles¶
A profile is linked to one or more user identities using the ProfileIdentity relationship. People and systems frequently have several - a normal account, an elevated account, a service account - and the relationship records which role each identity is used for, so the right one can be picked when navigating from the profile.
The profile says who the actor is. What they are responsible for is described separately by the actor roles they are appointed to. Keeping the two apart means an appointment can change without disturbing the identity, and a role can outlive whoever currently holds it.
Alongside the profile sit the actor's contact methods, their perspective and skills, and their contribution record.
Additional information
- The ActorProfile type, the UserIdentity type and the ProfileIdentity relationship are described in Model 0110 Actors.
- People, Roles and Organizations describes how metadata about people is populated and used.
- The Actor Manager API supports the maintenance of actor profiles.
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