Open Unified Data Exchange Architecture
Normative public terms and definitions used by OUDEA v0.1.
This page contains terminology required for OUDEA public architecture and interoperability contracts. Implementation-internal terminology is excluded unless required for independent interoperability.
The Open Unified Data Exchange Architecture: an open architecture for publishing, discovering, resolving, referencing, and exchanging governed data entities across independently operated, federated deployments.
OUDEA defines public identity, classification, discovery, reference, resolution, and exchange semantics. It does not require one implementation.
A reference implementation of OUDEA developed by Liberbyte GmbH. bytEM is not OUDEA; an implementation may differ internally from bytEM and still conform to OUDEA.
A governance domain: the authority that governs its DEID namespace and publishes the canonical Classes and Schemas used by DEIDs beneath it, for example cities.app.
A domain is an authority boundary and namespace owner. It is distinct from a current implementation instance or Matrix server.
Data Entity Identifier. The stable, portable identifier of a governed data entity, expressed as a canonical HTTPS URL.
A DEID identifies an entity rather than its current infrastructure location or version. It is governed by its domain, is globally unique, remains stable across infrastructure moves, and must not be silently reassigned or substituted when resolution fails.
A positional segment of a DEID path beneath the domain. The meaning of each position is domain-defined and must not be assumed globally.
The human-readable display name associated with a DEID.
The current lifecycle standing of a DEID.
OUDEA v0.1 uses, draft, registered / reserved, registered / advertised, and registered / exchangeable / open. Operational readiness is derived from those states and does not redefine DEID identity.
The REQUIRED canonical OUDEA semantic Class URI declared for a DEID.
Example:
https://cities.app/class/City
The canonical Class is governed by the DEID's domain. The Class describes what the governed data entity is independently of its delivery form.
The resolvable identifier of a class.
An OPTIONAL external semantic alignment associated with a canonical OUDEA Class, for example https://schema.org/City.
An external class does not replace the canonical OUDEA Class and does not determine OUDEA identity, governance, validation, or resolution.
An OPTIONAL canonical structure refining a Class for a DEID or individual supply-type.
A Class may have multiple Schemas. Each individual supply-type may declare zero or one Schema, and every declared Schema must semantically roll up to the DEID's declared Class.
A DEID without a Schema remains conforming. Each Schema document carries an explicit schema/document version. Where a Schema is declared, OUDEA validates the Schema-to-Class relationship at publication time.
The authority responsible for the published supply-types, their payloads, Schemas, and versions associated with a DEID.
Public indexes, Find documents, demand-side copies, and other derived projections are not authoritative sources of the underlying data.
One published data resource associated with a governed data entity.
The delivery form of an asset: how the data is made available, not what the data means.
A declared relationship from one DEID to another DEID.
The declared purpose of a DEID reference. The OUDEA public vocabulary may define specific roles such as part_of or benchmark.
The complete set of DEID references declared by a DEID.
A governed data entity that is intentionally represented as a data product.
A data product MAY be represented by a DEID. Not every DEID is a data product. A DEID representing a data product MAY use a Schema based on or aligned with external semantic models such as DPROD, DCAT, schema.org, PROV, ODRL, or another domain-specific model. External models complement but do not replace OUDEA identity, classification, References, resolution or Exchange semantics.
The document published by a governance domain at a DEID URL. It is the domain-controlled description of the governed data entity.
A standardized, minimal discovery projection containing public metadata required to discover and identify DEIDs.
The public index is derived metadata. It is not an authoritative source of the underlying data and MUST NOT contain or serve the authoritative exchanged payload.
The process by which a consumer identifies relevant governed data entities.
Discovery over public indexed metadata. Search returns DEID-oriented summaries rather than the actual exchanged data.
Resolution of a known DEID to its current information such infrastructure details, extended metadata, versioning etc required to proceed toward Exchange or to decide on exchange.
The DEID is stable identity; Find returns current resolution information. A consumer uses the current Find result before Exchange.
The per-DEID resolution result returned by Find. It contains current access/infrastructure information required for exchange and is distinct from the public index.
The OUDEA operation that transfers authoritative supply associated with a resolved DEID.
OUDEA v0.1 Exchange is DEID-wide by default: all currently exchangeable supply items are included, with the latest authoritative version of each item exchanged by default. Nested DEID References are evaluated one DEID at a time and are not recursively auto-exchanged.
A primary provenance source behind a governed data entity or asset.
A URL at which source content can be retrieved. A locator addresses content; a DEID identifies a governed entity.
A geographic position associated with a DEID where location is meaningful.
How location is determined for an entity as part of the DEID definition. Public values may include fixed, user_input, or none.
The official OUDEA specification release maintained and governed by Liberbyte GmbH.
An implementation used to demonstrate or realize OUDEA. Reference-implementation behavior is not automatically normative unless explicitly included in the OUDEA specification.
A directional, qualified relationship declared by one DEID to another DEID.
A v0.1 Reference object contains REQUIRED deid and role fields and an OPTIONAL label. The initial OUDEA Core role vocabulary is part_of and benchmark. Reference order is not semantically significant. Duplicate (deid, role) pairs are forbidden. A reference does not grant the source authority over the target and does not require a reciprocal reference.
The OUDEA protocol role fulfilled by a governed resource or operation. OUDEA v0.1 defines supply, demand, and exchange as Core operational roles. A protocol binding may map these concepts to protocol-specific containers such as Matrix rooms.
A broad OUDEA classification describing how a governed DEID is interpreted operationally. OUDEA v0.1 defines entity, dataset, and product. Resource kind does not replace the canonical Class. Additional resource kinds may be introduced in later OUDEA versions.
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This terminology document forms part of the OUDEA specification documentation and is subject to the repository specification license.