Data model

At a glance

Ontologie is built on a structured data model that organizes your business information. This model defines object categories, their attributes, and the links that connect them.

Core building blocks

The Ontologie data model relies on four complementary building blocks:

• Entity types (ObjectTypes): templates that define a category of business object. Examples: Customer, Product, Supplier, Contract.
• Properties: attributes attached to an entity type. Each property has a name and a value type: text, number, date, boolean, or list.
• Relations (LinkTypes): named links between entity types that describe how objects interact. Examples: Customer → purchases → Product, Supplier → delivers to → Warehouse.
• Instances: concrete occurrences of an entity type. Each instance carries the actual values for the properties defined by its type.

Type vs Instance

	Entity type	Instance
Role	Defines the structure (template)	Carries the actual data
Example	Customer	ACME Corp
Properties	Defines available fields (name, email, status)	Contains the values (ACME Corp, contact@acme.co, active)
Count	One per category	As many as needed
Editing	Changes the structure for all instances	Changes only this occurrence

Simplified schema

Entity types             Instances
┌─────────────┐         ┌──────────────────┐
│  Customer   │ ───────>│  ACME Corp       │
│  - name     │         │  name: ACME Corp │
│  - email    │         │  email: a@acme.co│
│  - status   │         │  status: active  │
└──────┬──────┘         └──────────────────┘
       │ purchases
┌──────▼──────┐         ┌──────────────────┐
│  Product    │ ───────>│  Widget Pro      │
│  - ref      │         │  ref: WP-001     │
│  - price    │         │  price: 49.90    │
└─────────────┘         └──────────────────┘

On the left, types define the structure. On the right, instances hold the real data. The purchases relation links the Customer type to the Product type and automatically applies to all instances of those types.

See also

• Ontology overview — Understand the modeling module
• Instances — Manage concrete occurrences of your types

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