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Glossary

This page lists the foundational terms used across the Context Catalog. Cross-referenced concepts are linked to their dedicated documentation pages.

Item​

An item is an entity recorded on the catalog. Anything can be an item, from a piece of software to a tangible physical resource. See Items.

Type and family​

Each item has a type. Items of the same type form a family and share a common schema that defines the shape of their information (e.g., an item of type Project belongs to the projects family).

Technical note

The type of an item is indicated by the combination of its apiVersion and kind root-level fields. The family is used to interact with items via API.

For example, a call to /console.mia-platform.eu/v1/items/projects returns all items having apiVersion = console.mia-platform.eu/v1 and kind = Project.

Item Type Definition (ITD)​

For the catalog to manage items of a given type, an Item Type Definition (ITD) must register that type in the system. Mia-Platform ships a set of default ITDs that enable core functionality; you can extend the catalog with custom ITDs of your own. See Item Types.

Technical note

An ITD declares a group, a kind, a family, and one or more versions. The link between an item and its ITD is:

  • item.apiVersion matches itd.spec.group/itd.spec.versions.name,
  • item.kind matches itd.spec.names.kind,
  • the item family matches itd.spec.names.plural.

Mia-Platform reserves the use of any group name ending in mia-platform.eu.

Object​

Items and ITDs are stored as objects. Objects share a predictable structure built around root-level fields:

  • apiVersion: the version of the schema for this object (e.g. mia-platform.eu/v1).
  • kind: the schema identifier (e.g. Service).
  • metadata: type-agnostic data identifying and describing the object.
  • spec: the type-specific information of the object.

Manifest​

A manifest is the JSON or YAML representation of an object. The Catalog API exchanges JSON; descriptor files are typically YAML for readability, but the structure and semantics are identical.

Relationship​

A relationship is a typed, directed link between a source item and a target item. The catalog provides built-in kinds (RelationshipType, RelationshipConstraint, and Relationship) to model, govern, and record connections between items. See Relationships.

Tags, labels, annotations, custom fields​

Four different mechanisms to attach additional information to an item, each with a different audience and contract:

  • Tags: free-form strings for human categorization (metadata.tags).
  • Labels: structured key/value pairs used for filtering and identity (metadata.labels).
  • Annotations: arbitrary key/value pairs reserved to automated systems (metadata.annotations).
  • Custom fields: typed extensions stored in the top-level customFields map of an item, governed by separate CustomField definitions that declare a JSON Schema and the item types they apply to.

See Items for the full comparison.

Owner and follower​

An owner is a User or Team responsible for an item, modeled as a built-in ownership relationship. A follower is any User who wants to receive compliance notifications about an item, modeled as a built-in follow relationship. Both relationships are surfaced in the UI and queried like any other relationship. See Items.

View​

A View is a saved, named query that scopes the catalog to a subset of items. Views are themselves catalog items: they can be referenced by Scorecards and Campaigns to declare their scope, and they appear in the Catalog Administration sidebar as bookmarks.

Selectable field​

A spec field declared on an Item Type Definition as queryable. The catalog provisions an index on selectable fields so that field= and rawq filters can target them.

Organization​

An organization is a hard isolation boundary in the catalog: each organization has its own database namespace, and resources of the same type must be unique within it.

URN (Item URN)​

Items can be referenced by URN in the format:

urn:mia-platform-catalog:<group>:<version>:<kind>:<name>

Examples:

  • urn:mia-platform-catalog:stable.example.com:v1:DockerImage:my-resource
  • urn:mia-platform-catalog:mia-platform.eu:v1alpha1:RelationshipType:ownership

Omitting the trailing :<name> yields an item type URN, which selects an entire family.

Resource version​

Each object carries a resourceVersion integer that uniquely identifies its current revision. The server changes it on every modification; clients pass it back unchanged on update, patch, and conditional delete operations to enable optimistic concurrency control.

Compliance terms​

  • Rule: A deterministic condition evaluated against a Catalog item. See Evaluation Criteria.
  • Rule-run: The record of a single evaluation of a rule against a context of items.
  • Campaign: A grouping of rules that must be satisfied by a set of items within a defined time window. See Campaigns.
  • Scorecard: A set of rules evaluated on a scope of items, used to express overall compliance posture. See Scorecards.