Working with namespaces

A namespace is an abstract container that you can fill with names or technical terms.

A namespace represents a real-world artifact. Namespaces are powerful tools for data standardization and reuse.

As a rule, names in a namespace cannot have more than one meaning. Two or more things cannot share the same name. A namespace is also called a context as the valid meaning of a name can change depending on what namespace applies. Names in it can represent objects as well as concepts.

A namespace is also a context for identifiers. An identifier defined in a namespace is associated with that namespace. An identifier can be defined in multiple namespaces. The meaning of an identifier in one namespace is completely separate from the meaning it has in any other namespace. Thus, a namespace introduces a new domain in which one can define any identifier with the guarantee that it will not clash with existing identifiers (because those will be associated with other namespaces).

Note: All element names within a namespace must be unique.

A namespace can be of the following types:

Additional Information about namespaces

Business Services Repository is a metadata storage system that manages RDF-based ontologies. Business Services Repository is not limited to a single ontology; it supports storage and retrieval of ontology under a given namespace.

In addition to basic namespace partitioning, Business Services Repository also adds the concept of namespace scope. A namespace scope determines which type of information can be stored under a particular namespace in the system. For example, a namespace with the scope of "Schema" will only contain classes and properties defining ontology, while a namespace with the scope of "Instance" will only contain individuals. Namespace scopes enable security to be applied to different types of ontologies. For example, the Schema scope can be restricted to user with the Knowledge Engineer role, while the Instance scope could be restricted to users with the Dynamic Assembler role. The most common extensions to the base ontology will be adding new assertions, especially content based assertions, new role types, and new channel types. Such extensions will be made in namespaces other than core ontology namespaces.

Related topics

Related concepts
Working with business services
Working with business variables
Working with policies
Working with correlation queries
Working with composite services
Working with interfaces
Working with endpoints
Working with the WSRR
Working with assertions
Working with context extraction
Working with the repository
Working with the SCA framework