Metaphysics
Asks What sorts of thing may this contain?
What kinds of thing a model may contain at all. Every knowledge structure draws a line between a term whose meaning is settled by definition, a construct it introduces to organise itself, and a record that answers to something outside it. Where that line is not drawn, a vocabulary entry and a claim about the world become interchangeable, and nothing downstream can tell which it is holding.
In this model Four admissions, declared on every kind: a governed term, a construct of this model, the public identity of a real organisation or product, and a record with a durable source. One exemplar per kind may show the shape of a record before any record exists.
Represented by
The engineering standards that state this foundation directly, among the works the commitments stand on.
- JSON Schema, draft 2020-12: core and validation specificationsJSON Schema (draft-bhutton-json-schema-01 and draft-bhutton-json-schema-validation-01), 2022
- OWL 2 Web Ontology Language PrimerW3C
Commitments it asks for — 7
- enforcedStore one canonical relationship assertion
- enforcedSeparate executable actions, observed events and consumer actor grain
- enforcedKeep concrete creative separate from its classifications
- enforcedAn exemplar shows the shape a record takes
- enforcedKnowledge enters as a term or an assertion, never as a new field
- enforcedEvery term is about something in the world
- enforcedThe ground has one schema, and it is data
What the build enforces — 10
- registry integritycanonical graph integrity
Endpoints resolve, relationship triples are unique, and compositions remain acyclic where the model requires it. - registry integritytyped relationships
Every relationship has declared endpoint kinds and a governed cardinality. - registry integrityevent grain
Every event states the grain it is recorded at, a consumer is named as actor only in an event that is a person's act, and a journey move is triggered only by an event resolvable to one person, so a count of events is never mistaken for a count of people and no move of one person rests on a fact about nobody in particular. - registry integrityadmission and shape
Every kind has a valid shape and evidence class, and every row keeps the admission its kind allows: a record names its source, an exemplar names none, and a world record states the public reference it stands on. - registry integritystable identifiers
Kind prefixes are unique, every row keeps the identity convention of its kind, and an identifier once retired is never reused: a kind writes each retirement down with its date and its reason, and every number below its highest is a row or a retirement. - registry integrityexemplar admission
A source-backed row is a record with a durable source reference or an exemplar of the pattern, never both and never neither; a vocabulary term is never an exemplar; and every exemplar answers to the name the exemplar commitment gives it, so renaming one cannot strand the sentence that threads them. - registry integritylicensed fields
Every file conforms to the one declared schema before any other law runs: a row carries only the fields the model licenses, and every field has the type and, where the set is closed, the value the schema states, so material arriving from outside cannot introduce structure merely by arriving. - ring:0the form ring
Every file of the ground and the ledger is in canonical form. - ring:1the files ring
Every file, the two law files first, conforms to the declared schema and sits where the registries say it sits. - ring:4the artifact ring
The graph conforms to its own schema and names the ground it is a function of.