information-system-model/docs/intro.rst

Information System (IS) Model

This Model is part of research conducted in the context of a PhD. This wiki page represents just a partial view of the full rationale of the research. To have a complete overview of the rationale of the model, please refer to the PhD thesis which is publicly available at:

https://etd.adm.unipi.it/t/etd-05102019-114151/

https://openportal.isti.cnr.it/doc?id=people______::470484e51fcb9e307a418c800efc44c8

If you need to refer to such work you can cite the PhD Thesis.

BibText:

@phdthesis{frosini2019transactional,

title={Transactional REST Information System for Federated Research Infrastructures enabling Virtual Research Environments}, author={Frosini, Luca}, year={2019}, school={UNIVERSITÀ DI PISA}

}

An previous paper about this work is:

BibText:

@article{frosini2018facet,

title={A Facet-based Open and Extensible Resource Model for Research Data Infrastructures.}, author={Frosini, Luca and Pagano, Pasquale}, journal={Grey Journal (TGJ)}, volume={14}, number={2}, year={2018}

}

The IS Model

The Information System Model (henceforth IS Model) is a graph model with Entities as nodes and Relations as edges.

• Two typologies of entities are envisaged:

  • Resources, i.e. entities representing a description of "thing" to be managed;

    • Every Resource is described by a number of Facets.

  • Facets, i.e. entities contributing to "build" a description of a Resource. Every facet, once attached to a Resource profile captures a certain aspect / characterization of the resource;

    • Every facet is characterised by a number of properties;

• Two typologies of relations are envisaged:

  • IsRelatedTo, i.e. a relation linking any two Resources.
  • ConsistsOf, i.e. a relation connecting each Resource with one of the Facets characterizing it;

• Each entity and relation

  • has an header automatically generated for the sake of identification and provenance of the specific information;

  • can be specialized

    • A number of specializations are identified below. Such specializations are managed by the gCube Core services, i.e. Core services builds upon these specializations to realize its management tasks;
    • Other specializations can be defined by clients, the system make it possible to store these additional typologies of relations and facets and to discover them.

• Facet and Relation instances can have additional properties which are not defined in the schema (henceforth schema-mixed mode).

• On relations:

  • Any relation has a direction, i.e. a "source" (out bound of the relation) and a "target" (in bound of the relation). Anyway, the relation can be also navigated in the opposite direction;

  • It is not permitted to define a Relation having a Facet as "source". In other words:

    • It is not permitted to define a Relation connecting a Facet with another one;
    • It is not permitted to define a Relation connecting a Facet with a Resource (as target);

  • A Facet instance can be linked (by ConsistsOf or any specialization of it) from different Resources.

We derived the term Facet directly from the dictionary definition. Merriam Webster Dictionary defines facet as “any of the definable aspects that make up a subject (as of contemplation) or an object (as of consideration)”[1].

The Free Dictionary defines a facet as “One of numerous aspects, as of a subject” [2].

---

IS Model Base Concept Definition

Any extension of the IS Model will be defined as following