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.

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 EditingGlossary, 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 Glossary Categories and that a glossary term many only be linked into one of these categories.

Such a taxonomy can be used to organize a complete collection of formal terms. It can also be exported onto a content management system an 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.

ExternallySourcedGlossary relationship¶

The ExternallySourcedGlossary relationship and ExternalGlossaryLink indicates that the content of this glossary comes from an external source. It may be, for example an industry-specific glossary, or from a standards body, or from an open data site, or from a commercial organization.

ExternalGlossaryLink entity¶

The ExternalGlossaryLink entity is a type of ExternalReference element that provides a detailed description of the location and provenance of the external glossary.

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