0310 Glossary Model¶

A glossary is a collection of related semantic definitions. A semantic definition describes the meaning of something. This may be, for example, a concept, object or activity. These are defined as Glossary Terms. The Glossary is a collection of glossary terms and other related definitions. These can be organized into folders.

A metadata repository may contain many glossaries, particularly when it is part of a bigger enterprise. Each glossary may come from a specific team or external organization. Or it may be focused on a particular topic or set of use cases.

Glossary entity¶

The anchor for each glossary is the Glossary entity.

The Taxonomy and CanonicalVocabulary classifications associated with the glossary entity are used to document the type of vocabulary it contains and its purpose. These classifications are independent of one another so a Glossary object may have none, one or all of these classifications attached.

Taxonomy classification¶

The Taxonomy classification means the glossary includes a formal hierarchy of Folders and that a glossary term many only be linked into one of these folders.

Such a taxonomy can be used to organize a complete collection of formal terms. It can also be exported onto a content management system and be used to categorize and organize documents and other media in content repositories.

CanonicalVocabulary classification¶

The CanonicalVocabulary classification means that all the terms in the glossary have a unique name. Typically such a glossary is used to link entities representing data fields with glossary terms via the SemanticAssignment relationship to indicate that the glossary term describes the meaning of the data stored in the data field.

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