Entities model

The basic entity model consists of a class, entity, components, relationships, aliases, and data source.

CONNECT uses a predefined industry standard categorization of entities called class, such as: asset, document, stream, event, and other industrial entities. Entities are classified via their attached components, and can have only one class, but can be multi-typed. For more details on classes refer to Types storage.

CONNECT’s system-defined classes are extensible by the customer. For details, refer to Root classes and class IDs.

There is a special metadata "extended attributes" base type that does not count as a class and can be mixed and matched freely with other classes and components. This allows additional information (metadata) context to be applied to entities of all classes. For more information, refer to Extended attributes.

Entities are modular, contextual representations of industrial objects. An entity is composed of discrete components which define the class and derive the types (such as a pump, diffusion pump, P&ID, or Bill of Materials) and is capable of being connected to other industrial data types through relationships. If one of the components belongs to the "Asset" class, then other components must also belong to the Asset class.

The basic entity structure contains:

• dataSource

• id

• name

• description

• properties

• relationships

• aliases

• securityTags

The basic component structure contains:

• dataSource

• typeID

• properties

• relationships

The entity model is flexible and can be extended by adding ad hoc properties or by using the Type Management service to define a structure for different types of entities. Refer to Types storage for more information about types and type inheritance.

Ad hoc properties

Ad hoc properties provide additional context about a particular entity that is not covered by standard entity properties. Because these are specific to an entity, you must provide data type information along with the value for each property. Ad hoc properties can also reference enumeration sets defined with Type Management.

Relationships

Entities support relationships targeting other entities or events. The relationship target describes the nature of the relationship ("Parent", "Child", "Related"). Relationships can be defined per entity or at the Entity Type level, using the Type Management service.

Aliases

In addition to an entity having a Name, ID, Description, and Class, an entity also has an alias. A given entity may have one or more aliases which provides lookups by another name, This also provides the ability to ‘link’ aliases providing a mechanism to view a comprehensive picture of an entity and all its representations even if it is defined in multiple disparate data sources.

To create linked entities the relationship predicate used to identify entities that overlap will be “is known as”.  The sub-graph of aliased entities will always have this hub and spoke data structure where a single entity will be at the center and connected to all other aliased entities.  Refer to Entity Management.

Data source

Data source provides the ability to capture, record, and find from what system any given entity or event originated. This allows you to retrieve and trace data (streams, assets, events, types, documents, and so on) back to their data source. For example: 30 streams, 12 assets, and 4 types came from System Platform, while 100 Events came from MES, 20 documents came from a Document Management System1. Refer to Entity Management for more information.

Dynamic hierarchies

CONNECT provides an easy, flexible, scalable way to model and explore hierarchical relationships. With the ability to author hierarchies via API or the UI, you can easily add, remove, or maintain multiple configurable hierarchies. These user-selectable and navigable hierarchies are complete with security access controls. PI data hierarchy and System Platform are seeded in CONNECT. For more information refer to Dynamic hierarchies.