Modality

Asks How many, and what kind of claim?

The difference between how many and whether. A bound says a thing may be connected once or many times; it never says what sort of assertion the connection is. Collapse the two and a design decision starts reading as evidence — the most common way a model comes to claim more than it knows.

In this model Cardinality and claim are separate axes on every relationship. Cardinality counts. Claim says whether the link holds by definition, only typically, by observation, by causation, or as advice.

Represented by

The engineering standards that state this foundation directly, among the works the commitments stand on.

• Shapes Constraint Language (SHACL)W3C
• OWL 2 Web Ontology Language PrimerW3C

Commitments it asks for — 9

• enforcedDeclare measurement grain before calculation
• enforcedCampaign is the accountable initiative
• enforcedSeparate executable actions, observed events and consumer actor grain
• enforcedScope activation and calculation explicitly in time and geography
• enforcedA journey is a state machine, not a funnel picture
• enforcedDelivery custody is a named chain, not one vendor field
• enforcedA metric exists because a question needs it
• enforcedCreative form is constrained by where it is delivered
• enforcedA relationship says what kind of claim it makes

What the build enforces — 7

• registry integritycalculation and projection integrity
  Formula inputs, metric composition, cardinality, and plan projections satisfy their declared contracts.
• registry integritydistinct definitions
  No two rows of different kinds are defined in the same words, and no definition restates a field the row already carries, so a distinction the model commits to is carried where a reader meets it and nothing the model knows is stored in two places at once.
• registry integritytyped relationships
  Every relationship has declared endpoint kinds and a governed cardinality.
• registry integritythe hierarchy holds
  A tactic stands within its campaign and an action within its tactic. For each containment the kernel declares, along the road that makes one the child of the other, the child narrows what the parent declares, a window, a geography, an audience, and never widens it, or keeps what the parent honours, a preference, a permission basis, and never drops it. A parent that declares nothing binds nothing, and the same road declared at two levels can no longer contradict itself.
• 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 integrityjourney integrity
  Every journey begins at one of its own positions and carries at least one legal move, its positions sit on a contiguous run of rungs, and every position either has a move out or realises a condition another journey leaves from, so no journey is a picture and no position is a dead end.
• registry integrityrelational claim
  Every relationship declares what kind of claim it makes, a hedging verb claims no more than it says, a typing is always constitutive because it says what a thing is, one verb carries one claim, and no claim class sits unused.