Glossary#
General terms#
- API#
Application Programming Interface. See Wikipedia:API
- Data Model#
A high-level abstract representation of how data is organized in a system (for example entity‑relationship, document, key‑value). Not to be confused with Schema. See the data model and schema tutorial.
- Schema#
A concrete specification of the structure for a particular dataset or database instance based on a data model (e.g., tables/columns and types in SQL, JSON Schema for documents). It lists fields, types, constraints, and optionally default values.
- Vocabulary#
A set of terms used to describe a domain of interest (e.g., “Person”, “birthDate”, “worksAt”). In the context of a Schema, the terms are the names of the Schema’s components (fields, types, classes).
LinkAhead’s data model#
- Record#
Represents individual thing - a single person named “Alice”, a particular sample with bar code “xyz”. See the data model and schema tutorial.
- RecordType#
Represents universals, classes, concepts, categories. Every Record has a RecordType. See the data model and schema tutorial.
- Parent#
All Entities can have parents. Records must have parents. A parent is the more abstract or more general description of the respective Entity. See the data model and schema tutorial.
- Property#
Represents the properties of both individuals and universals, e.g., the hair color is a property of a person. See the data model and schema tutorial.
- Entity#
Records, RecordTypes, Properties and Files in LinkAhead can all referred to as Entities. See the data model and schema tutorial.
- File#
Represents a binary file, which can be downloaded.
Other terms#
- CFood#
The specification in YAML format that defines which data is matched by the crawler and how it is mapped to Records in LinkAhead. See documentation in CFoods.
- Crawler#
The main data integration tool used by LinkAhead. See documentation in The LinkAhead Crawler.
- LQL#
LinkAhead Query Language, the textual representation to ask LinkAhead for data.
- POV filter#
Short for property-operator-value filter. A filter in LQL that restricts results based on the value of a property, for example
property1=value1. See the LQL reference.- StructureElement#
Each element in a hierarchical structure that can be integrated by the Crawler is represented by a StructureElement. See documentation in Structure Elements.