Terminological conventions for developing and documenting our model

[mbrush]

Proposing some terminological conventions for concepts that are commonly used/referenced in developing and documenting our model. The idea is to assign a clear and specific name for each concepts, to be used consistently in our documentation and discussions. This is only an initial proposal - other feel free to edit/extend in this ticket.

CRDC Domain Concepts

• CRDC node (aka ‘node’): an official commons resource in the CRDC ecosystem (e.g. GDC, PDC, IDC ICDC)
• source repository: a resource that is currently or may in the future provide data that gets deposited, aggregated, or index by CRDC/CCDH tools. May include official commons nodes such as GDC, PDC, ICDC, related networks/DCCs such as HTAN, cloud resources such as Seven Bridges, or external repositories such as Kids First.
• source data model: the data model used to structure or exchange data by a source repository.

Data Modeling Concepts

• entity: an object in the data model, holding properties describing it, and relationships to other entities (may elsewhere be called a class, type, object, or concept)
• relationship: an association between entities (may elsewhere be called a link, edge, or association).
• property: an element within an entity used to capture a specific type of information about/related to it (may elsewhere be called a slot, attribute, field).
• attribute: we will use this term to refer to properties and relationships collectively (i.e. properties and relationships are both kinds of attributes).
• data element: a property + its value domain - aligned with the notion of a Common Data Element (CDE) in caDSR.
• instance: the instantiation of a particular entity in the data (may elsewhere be called an individual, particular, object)

[mbrush]

Consider using 'class' instead of 'entity', because we may want to use 'entity' in a more generic/non-technical term to refer to a thing in the real world (an entity is the thing in the real world, a class is a modeling construct used to represent such an entity).

I find myself often using the term 'entity' to refer to 'entities' in the real world, but if we reserve this as the technical term for a class in a data model, I cannot use it in this way . . . and the only other word I can think to use then is 'thing' or 'concept', which I don't like.