Templates

There are nine fundamental template types in which to store data in a referent tracking system (RTS).

They are:

Name	Abbreviation	Description
assignment	A	Captures the assignment of an IUI to a particular (or instance)
particular to universal	PtoU	Captures the assertion that a particular, identified by an IUI, is related to a universal by a particular relation. It is typically used for the instance of relation.
temporal entity	Te	Captures the assignment of an IUI to a temporal entity, as well as the basic type (interval vs. instant) of the temporal entity. This template is a "shortcut" combination of assignment and particular-to-universal for temporal entities. It and the Ten template help to reduce significantly the number of templates needed to capture temporal entities and their names.
temporal entity name	Ten	Captures the name of a temporal entity (e.g. "2013-10" for the month of October in the Gregorian Calendar according to the ISO 8601 standard). Names of other entities are explicitly represented with an A template (assign IUI to name), a PtoP template (relate name to the entity it designates), and a PtoDR template (relate name to its concretized form).
particular to particular	PtoP	Captures the assertion that two particulars are related by a particular relation such as part of.
particular lacks universal	PtoLackU	Captures the assertion that a particular lacks a specific relation r to any instance of a universal.
particular to concept	PtoCo	Captures the annotation of a particular with a concept from a concept-based terminology. It does NOT assert that the particular is an instance of a given type (or universal), is related to other particulars by specific relations, or lacks a relation to any instance of a given universal.
particular to digital entity	PtoDE
metadata	D

Assignment

The assignment template captures the assignment of an instance unique identifier (IUI) to a particular (or instance) in reality.

Parameter	Description	Notes
iui_p	The IUI that has been assigned to a particular	IUIs that designate entities (other than temporal regions or templates themselves) must first be assigned using an A template.
iui_a	The IUI that designates the entity who assigned iui_p to a particular	To avoid infinite regress, somewhere early on in the RTS, some person must assign an IUI to herself.
t_ap	The time when the assignment was made	To avoid complexities of using temporal region IUIs here, we simply use an ISO8601 compliant date/time string (e.g., 2013-10-31T14:48:32.234-05:00)
iui_t	The IUI of the A template itself	Every template gets an IUI that is referenced minimally by one metadata template

PtoU

The particular-to-universal template captures the assertion that a given particular is an instance of a given universal. It can also be used to capture other particular-universal (a.k.a. instance-type) relations, such as is_about.

Parameter	Description	Notes
iui_p	The IUI that designates the particular that is the subject of this template
iui_a	The IUI that designates the author of this template
t_a	The IUI that designates the temporal region at which this PtoU assertion was made
inst	The relation that holds between the particular denoted by iui_p and the universal denoted by uui	It is called "inst" because it is typically the is instance of relation, but other relations can be used here such as is about.
uui	The UUI that designates the universal to which the particular is related	Typically a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) from an OWL ontology. But not necessary.
iuio	The IUI of the ontology from which uui and inst were obtained	Increasingly, this parameter seems irrelevant. Although MIREOT allows that a given URI for a universal could come from any number of ontologies, it is not clear that it is valuable to say which one it came from specifically. Furthermore, we might have taken the relation (inst) and uui from different ontologies. It is not clear how to handle that situation either.
t_r	The temporal region during which the relation inst holds between the particular (iui_p) and universal (uui)
iui_t	The IUI of the template itself	Every template gets an IUI that is referenced minimally by one metadata template.

Documentation

Templates

Assignment

PtoU

Te

Ten

PtoP

PtoLackU

PtoCo

PtoDE

Metadata