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Special Concepts, Fields and Relationships in the Standard Octostar Ontology

Special Concepts​

  • os_thing: A generic Octostar entity, with a universally unique ID, a concept type and a description
  • os_workspace_item: Any item that can belong to a workspace. This also includes entities NOT belonging to a workspace (global entities), where the os_workspace field is null
  • os_attachable: Any item in Octostar that has a file attachment. Files are kept externally w.r.t. records (e.g. S3), and are stored based on a combination of workspace ID and entity ID
  • os_business_workspace_record: A generic Octostar entity which is of interest for an investigation. Anything inheriting from this entity (and not beginning with os_) can be created, edited, and visualized in many different ways in the platform. Also, all such concepts are customizable in the ontology by admins
  • os_message: An annotation-like objects in Octostar, that is, an entity that augments the information about another entity. These include annotations and comments
  • os_tag: A tag which can be applied to entities. Tags are local to workspaces, meaning they have a non-null os_workspace field. Tags can also have a color, a name, and belong to a group, such that only one tag in the group can be applied to an entity

os_workspace_permission: A record detailing the level of access a user has for a specific workspace. These rules override the general role permissions

  • os_wsfs_object: A workspace item which is visible in the Octostar workspace filesystem (the left sidebar). Items of this type can be moved, copied, exported and imported into workspaces with a classical filesystem structure
  • os_file: An os_wsfs_object which behaves much like a file in a typical Operating System
  • os_folder: An os_wsfs_object which behaves like a folder in a typical Operating System
  • os_workspace: A special type of os_folder. Workspaces are separate filesystem spaces, each containing files, entities and even apps, dashboards, and templates.
  • os_watch_intent: An entity associated with another entity which is being watched for updates. Periodically, the presence of an os_watch_intent triggers a job in k8s to perform some customizable operation on the associated entity
  • os_dashboard_visualization: A template for a dashboard. The presence of this entity in an open workspaces makes that dashboard type visible when inspecting the concept types associated with the dashboard itself
  • os_linkchart: An entity representing an Octostar linkchart. A linkchart is a graph made of nodes (entities) and links (relationships). Users can interact with and edit these linkchart from the Linkchart Editor.

Special Properties​

Here is a brief explanation for some of the most important OS-reserved properties in the ontology :

  • os_entity_uid: the globally unique identifier for a record.
  • os_concept: the concept type for the record (same as the entity_type in most cases)
  • os_icon: the icon shown whenever this record is seen in the octostar platform. If not specified, the icon shown is based on the concept type
  • os_workspace: the workspace to which this record belongs. If empty, the entity is considered part of the global data
  • os_parent_folder: for workspace file records, the direct parent folder of this file
  • os_has_attachment: for file records, whether the record has an associated S3 attachment (which is the file proper)
  • os_item_content: for workspace file records, any contents for the file which have been written directly in the record rather than off-loaded to S3. Commonly used for metadata, thumbnails or annotations
  • os_item_content_type: for workspace file records, the MIME type of the attachment of this file record. For app folders, set to os_app. For saved searches files, set to os_saved_search
  • os_textsearchfield~~~~: the textual string for which this record can be searched

Special Relationships​

Here is a brief explanation for some of the most important OS-reserved relationships in the ontology:

  • in_workspace (OTM): Indicates that an entity belongs to a workspace. Foreign key is the os_entity_uid↔os_workspace fields between the workspace and the entity
  • featured_in (MTM): Indicates that an entity is shown in a certain os_file. Previews for that entity will show that file
  • has_tag (MTM): Indicates that an entity is associated with a certain os_tag. The platform will show tags associated with an entity in most viewers.
  • annotated_with (OTM): Indicates that an entity has a certain annotation associated with it. Annotations are written by apps and the pipeline to augment knowledge about an entity. Foreign keys are the os_entity_uid↔source_entity_uid between the entity and the annotation
  • same_as (MTM): Indicates that two entities have been resolved to be the same one via some Entity Resolution technique, e.g. Senzing
  • watcher_for (MTM): Indicates that an entity is being watched by a given os_watch_intent. A watcher will periodically perform operations with that entity as an input and, upon changes of the output, will notify the user(s) subscribed to said watcher
  • has_comment (OTM): Indicates that an entity has a comment associated with it. Comments can be added to any entity and are shown in a dedicated tab when looking at them through the Record/File Viewer. Foreign keys are the os_entity_uid↔source_entity_uid between the entity and the comment