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)
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 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.
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	Captures the relationship between information content entities and their concretization as an encoded string of binary digits. Note that the purist way of doing things would be to assign an IUI to evey unique character string in some set of characters. But since each such unique string can serve as its own identifier, it seems very inefficient. Trying to keep two or more RTSs in synch so that they all have the same IUI for the string "befuddled" would be befuddling indeed.
metadata	D	Captures data about templates. More formally, we have reconfigured the metadata template to represent an event that occurs inside the RTS itself.

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.
iui_o	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.

Te

The temporal entity template captures both the assignment of an IUI to, and the basic type (instance vs. interval) of, a given temporal region. With the Ten template, it simplifies management of temporal entities and their names.

Parameter	Description	Notes
iui_p	The IUI that has been assigned to a temporal region	IUIs that designate a temporal region must first be assigned using a Te template.
iui_a	The IUI that designates the entity who assigned iui_p to a particular	The entity that assigned the IUI to the temporal region.
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).
uui	The basic type of the temporal region, according to Basic Formal Ontology	Either temporal interval or temporal boundary (a.k.a. temporal instant).
iui_t	The IUI of the Te template itself	Every template gets an IUI that is referenced minimally by one metadata template.

Ten

The temporal entity name template captures exactly one name of a given temporal entity, including the assignment of an IUI to the name. With the Te template, it simplifies management of temporal entities and their names.

Note that a particular temporal interval can have multiple names. For example, the time interval denoted by 2013-11-08T14:00-06:00 (an ISO8601 standard name for 2p Central Standard Time on Friday, November 8, 2013) has at least 23 other names (in different time zones): 2013-11-08T15:00-05:00, 2013-11-08T20:00Z, 2013-11-09T05:00+09:00, etc. Note that the date is actually different in the last name from the others.

For every temporal entity for which we store a name, we ought to also store the UTC name (2013-11-08T20:00Z) in the RTS ideally.

Notes:

Captures the assignment of the IUI to the name in addition to the name
Implicit type of the name is Proper name from the Proper Names Ontology.
Implicit relationship between the name and the temporal entity it designates is designates.
Every Ten template is associated with one Te template. A Te template may be associated with multiple Ten templates.

Parameter	Description	Notes
iui_p	The IUI of the name of the temporal region	IUIs that designate a temporal region must first be assigned using a Te template.
iui_a	The IUI that designates the entity who asserted this name for the temporal entity.
t_a	The IUI that designates the temporal region at which this PtoU assertion was made
iui_te	The IUI of the temporal entity that this name designates.	There must be a Te template that assigns this IUI.
name	The name itself, ideally as a Unicode string	For example: 2013-11-08T18:00-02:00
ns	The IUI of the naming system to which the name belongs	For example, Gregorian Calendar, Hebrew Calendar, Chinese Calendar, etc. ISO 8601 is a standard for formatting names according to the Gregorian Calendar.
iui_t	The IUI of the Ten template itself	Every template gets an IUI that is referenced minimally by one metadata template.

PtoP

The particular-to-particular template captures the assertion that a relationship holds between a set of particulars.

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 PtoP assertion was made
p	The set of IUIs that denote that particulars that stand in the relation r	The first IUI in the set is redundant with iui_p. Also, typically these will be binary relations, and there will only be two IUIs in this set. However, there is nothing inherent to referent tracking that limits the PtoP template to binary relations, and relations of any arity can be accomodated.
r	The relation that holds between the particulars
iui_o	The IUI of the ontology from which r was obtained	Increasingly, this parameter seems irrelevant. Although MIREOT allows that a given URI for a relation could come from any number of ontologies, it is not clear that it is valuable to say which one it came from specifically.
t_r	The temporal region during which the relation r holds between the particulars (p)
iui_t	The IUI of the template itself	Every template gets an IUI that is referenced minimally by one metadata template.

PtoLackU

The particular-lacks-universal template captures the assertion that a given particular does not stand in a given relation r to any instance of a given universal. For example, we would use this template to assert that a person has not had a cough for the past 4 weeks (i.e., he has not participated in any coughing processes during the 4 week interval ending today).

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
r	The relation that does not hold between the particular denoted by iui_p and any instance of the universal denoted by uui
uui	The UUI that designates the universal to which the particular is not related by r	Typically a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) from an OWL ontology. But not necessary.
iui_o	The IUI of the ontology from which uui and r 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 r does not hold 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.

PtoCo

The particular-to-concept template captures the annotation of a given particular with a particular concept. The inclusion of this template is meant to accommodate the many concept-based terminologies in existence at the time of this writing. Note that the semantics are very weak here. The template does not necessarily assert that the particular is of a given type, is related to other particulars through a given relation, or is not related to types via a given relation.

For example, annotation of a particular with something "diabetes mellitus without complication" does not mean the particular is an instance of Disease (in fact, the particular being annotated with this concept is most likely to be an instance of Organism). It does not guarantee that the particular is related to an instance of disease: consider a particular annotated with the concept "scheduled operation". No operation exists, because it hasn't happened yet! And it does not guarantee that the particular has no bearer of relation to Decubitus ulcer (sometimes a complication of diabetes mellitus) because some concept-based systems classify it elsewhere.

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
co	The concept code with which the particular (iui_p) is being annotated
c	The IUI of the system of concepts from which co was taken.
t_r	The temporal region during which the annotation holds between the particular (iui_p) and concept (co)	This parameter should probably be optional in this template. From a concept-based perspective, the fact that this annotation holds at any time during the history of the particular is adequate to assert an annotation. Trying to get too much precision out of concept codes is probably not worth the effort.
iui_t	The IUI of the template itself	Every template gets an IUI that is referenced minimally by one metadata template.

PtoDE

The particular-to-digital entity template captures the assertion that a given information content entity is concretized by a string of characters and/or numerals that are encoded in binary digits. Note that the purist approach to RT would assign an IUI to each unique string within a set of characters. However, it seems inefficient and trying to synchronize the IUIs for "befuddled" among two or more RTSs would be "befuddling" indeed.

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 PtoDE assertion was made
r	The relation that holds between the particular denoted by iui_p and the universal denoted by uui	Mostly we just use is concretized by. Not clear what other relations would be appropriate, but we maintain the flexibility nonetheless.
de	The digital entity itself	Mostly we'll just have strings here (probably UTF-8 or ASCII or in case of Mac some other encoding)
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. It would say whether the encoding is Unicode (and even then UTF-8 or UTF-16), ASCII, big or little endian double/float, integer, long, etc.
iui_o	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 r holds between the particular (iui_p) and universal (uui)	It is not entirely clear with this temporal region would be. The fact that someone's name is concretized as "William Hogan" would hold from the time that that name for the person began to exist, typically at or shortly after birth. But then the name outlives the individual, so this temporal region would be different than the interval occpied by the person's history, although both intervals would have the same left boundary.
iui_t	The IUI of the template itself	Every template gets an IUI that is referenced minimally by one metadata template.

Metadata

Per our metadata template reformulation, each metadata template represents some event that occurred in the RTS.

Parameter	Description	Notes
iui_t	The IUI that designates the template undergoing change	All changes are carried out through insertion, invalidation, or revalidation of a template (that is an instance of one of the above types of templates)
iui_d	The IUI that designates the entity who made the change
t_d	The time when the change 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)
CT	The type of change	I = insertion, X = invalidation, R = revalidation
C	The reason for the change	CR = change in relevance, CE = change in reality, CB = change in belief, XR = recognition of error
EC	The type of error that is being rectified by the change	There is a huge list of change reasons. Some of them are applicable only to A templates, some only to PtoU templates, some only to PtoP templates, etc.
S	The IUI(s) of the template(s) that contain corrected information in the event that C = XR	For example, if a duplicate IUI was assigned to a person, then we would invalidate the second (later of the two) assignment template. This parameter would then point to the original, good IUI assignment (whereas the iui_t parameter would point to the A template that is being invalidated).

Referent Tracking System

Documentation