Higgins Data Model 1.0

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Version 1.0

• This page describes the Higgins 1.0 Context Data Model
• See Context Data Model 2.0 for the version currently under development

Introduction

Although it can be used for almost any kind of data, the focus of the Context Data Model is to provide a foundation for integrating, unifying, and sharing identity-related data. In particular we are focused on information about a person, a group or an entire organization. This might include contact information, authentication data, preferences, email addresses, interests, employer-related information. An object representing a single person, might have relationships to other objects and other people in the same or different data contexts.

See:

• Context Data Model Background for information about motivations and design goals.

Core Semantics

The Context Data Model encompasses the core semantics of the W3C's Resource Description Framework (RDF); anything expressible in RDF is expressible in the Context Data Model although the converse isn't true.

Most of the subtle but important differences between Context Data Model and RDF are derived from differences in the choice of identifiers used to identify objects in each model. RDF is based on pure HTTP URIs, whereas Context Data Model is based on a more generalized URI called a UDI. Objects identified by URIs in RDF are called Resources, whereas in Context Data Model they are identified by UDIs and are called Entities.

Context Data Model includes a kind of object called a Context that has no analog in RDF. Individual Contexts can be thought of as containers of portions of the overall graph of objects. Contexts partition the data space into disjoint sets of objects. Context Provider plug-in implementations map sets of data resources stored in a various kinds of data stores into objects within Context boundaries in the Context Data Model

Context Data Model also differs from RDF on a syntactic (semantically lossless) level. In RDF an object may have N properties of type T each of which has a single value whereas in Context Data Model an object may only have 0..1 property of type T, and if the property exists it has 1..N values. Further, in Context Data Model these properties are called Attributes.

Domain Concepts

The Context Data Model 1.0 defines these concepts:

Attribute

Defines a property of an Node or a Context. Has a type (URI). Has one or more values all of which MUST be unique. The value of an Attribute is an instance of AttributeValue.

AttributeValue

An object that hold either a literal value or a complex value. In Higgins 1.0 this instance can also hold what was called "metadata" values (e.g. creation date-time, expiration date-time).

Context

A set of one or more Nodes

ContextId

A URI that identifies a Context

Entity

Person, thing, juridical entity, concept, animal or anything with separate existence.

Node (aka Digital Subject)

A representation of an Entity within a given context. Nodes and Entities are not the same concept. The distinction is subtle but critical. In Higgins the same Entity is usually represented by multiple Nodes in different Contexts.

NodeId

A NodeId is a kind of simple-valued Attribute of an Node. Its value uniquely identifies an instance of an Node. The value of an NodeId is a single NodeId Data Range URI

Node Relation

A kind of Attribute of a Node. Each value of an Node Relation identifies a Node [Note: the target Nodes may be in the same or different Contexts as the source Node ]. The value(s) of an Node Relation is a Node. More precisely, the value is a NodeId Data Range URI that is dereferenced to produce a Node instance.

Node Correlation

A Node Correlation is a kind of Attribute of a source Node. Each value of a Node Correlation identifies a target Node. Each source-target Node pair expresses that both Nodes are representations of the same Entity

Higgins.owl

Higgins.owl 1.0 is an abstract (sometimes called an "upper") ontology for identity information. It is abstract in that it doesn't describe any concrete attributes such as "email address" or "first name". It also doesn't define very specialized classes of objects such as "calendar event" or "student", "movie", "book", etc. These are left to Context Providers to define for themselves.

Note: In the Identity Attribute Service the term "Digital Subject" was changed to "Node" just before the release of Higgins 1.0. However, the term was not changed in version 1.0 of higgins.owl where the term "Digital Subject" remains.

Context Ontologies

Every Context can defines its own ontology. This ontology declares the OWL classes and properties used by instances within that Context. This Context-defined ontology must be based on higgins.owl (i.e. it must import higgins.owl).

Classes

This section is a summary of the main classes in higgins.owl. Each numbered item lists a class (e.g. "Attribute"). The sub-items show properties defined for this class (e.g. "source") prefixed by the cardinality of this property on this class (e.g. "O..N").

Note: subclasses of SimpleValue are listed separately in the next section to reduce clutter.

Classes in alphabetic order:

Attribute

Instances of this class are used as the domain of a set of higgins:metadata properties that, taken together, are considered to be the metadata about a higgins:attribute sub-property.

ComplexValue

subclass of Value

ContextId

URI of a Context

ContextObject

• 0..N hasContextRelations

ContextRelation

• 0..N contextId

SimpleValue (subclass of Value)

• 1..N simpleValue

Digital Subject

• 1..1 uniqueIdentifier
• 0..N timeSpan
• 0..N attribute

SubjectRelation

Subclass of ComplexValue.

• 1..1 contextId
• 1..1 subjectId

SubjectCorrelation

Subclass of SubjectRelation. If DigitalSubject A has a correlation relation to DigitalSubject B, this implies that that A and B represent different representations of the same underlying Entity. This relation only navigable in one direction: in this example from A to B.

TimeSpan

• 0..1 validFrom --if not present, assume validFrom is the beginning of time
• 0..1 validTo --if not present, assume validTo is the end of time

Value

• 0..N source
• 0..N creator
• 0..N creationTime
• 0..N timeSpan
• 0..1 lastModified
• 0..1 syncConflict
• 0..1 lastVerifiedFromSource
• 0..1 lastVerifyAttempt

Subclasses of SimpleValue

The following mirror the XML Schema types recommended for use with OWL

1. AnyURI
2. Base64Binary
3. Boolean
4. Byte
5. Date

...etc

DataType (literal valued) Properties

lastModified

• domain: Value
• range: xsd:dateTime

lastVerifiedFromSource

• domain: Value
• range: xsd:dateTime

lastVerifyAttempt

• domain: Value
• range: xsd:dateTime

simpleMetadata

• domain: Value, DigitalSubject

simpleValue

• domain: SimpleValue

subjectID

• domain: SubjectRelation
• range: xsd:normalizedString

syncConflict

• domain: Value
• range: xsd:boolean

validFrom

• domain: TimeSpan
• range: xsd:date

validTo

• domain: TimeSpan
• range: xsd:date

Sub-Properties of simpleValue

1. anyURI - domain(AnyURI), range(xsd:anyURI)
2. boolean - domain(Boolean), range(xsd:boolean)
3. base64Binary - domain(Base64), range(xsd:base64Binary)

...etc for all of the rest of the XML Schema datatypes

Object (object valued) Properties

1. attribute - domain(DigitalSubject, ContextObject, ComplexValue), range(Value, Attribute)
2. complexMetadata - domain(DigitalSubject, Attribute)
3. complexValue - domain(ComplexAttribute)
4. contextID - domain(ContextRelation, SubjectRelation), range(ContextID)
5. contextRelation - domain(ContextObject), range(ContextRelation)
6. source - domain(Attribute), range(SubjectRelation). The value is a SubjectRelation that indicates the authoritative source of the value of this Attribute
7. timeSpan - domain(DigitalSubject, Attribute), range(TimeSpan)
8. uniqueIdentifier - domain(DigitalSubject), range(higgins:StringSimpleAttribute). Uniquely identifies a DigitalSubject within a context

Annotation Properties

The following have been copied verbatim from http://protege.stanford.edu/plugins/owl/owl-library/2005/08/07/xsp.owl. These allow us to express the semantics of XML Schema within a Higgins-based ontology RDF file.

1. base
2. fractionDigits
3. length
4. maxExclusive
5. maxInclusive
6. maxLength
7. minExclusive
8. minInclusive
9. minLength
10. pattern
11. totalDigits

Misc Notes

The value of the uniqueIdentifier attribute is immutable. All Digital Subjects have exactly one uniqueIdentifier attribute whose value is set when the Digital Subject is instantiated.

Note: The properties of the Context container itself are attached to special object called ContextObject within the instance data and also described in the ontology.

Extending HOWL

Developers must create specialized ontologies based on HOWL that describe specific concrete domains.

For example, if a developer wanted to describe a CRM database, she would create an OWL ontology that would describe the data objects in the CRM database. This CRM database is called a Context in Higgins. If, for example, the database contained records about customers and those customers had full-names and email addresses, then the developer would define "Customer" as a sub-class of Node (Digital Subject, or Entity) and "full-name" and "email" as kinds of attributes.

Here are some HOWL-based Ontologies:

• test-person Example Context Ontology
• Person-with-address Example Context Ontology
• Person-with-friend Example Context Ontology