Glossary · Extensions

iiRDS docking point

Also known as: docking point, extension point

In iiRDS (intelligent information Request and Delivery Standard), a docking point is an iiRDS class that is meant to be extended with proprietary subclasses and instances, because the resources it describes — such as components, product variants or events — are too company- or industry-specific for the standard to define.

iiRDS term
Ontology
Information architecture

In one sentence

An iiRDS docking point is a class the standard leaves open on purpose — such as Component or Event — for companies to fill with their own vocabulary.

Example

A medical device manufacturer adds the class “Infusion pump module” as a subclass of iirds:Component and lists its modules as instances.

How it applies

Which classes: The subclasses of iirds:DocumentationMetadata that have no further subclasses are docking points. The specification names iirds:ProductVariant, iirds:Component, iirds:ProductFunction, iirds:ProductProperty and iirds:Event explicitly; classes such as iirds:Supply and iirds:Role work the same way.
Technical documentation: Every manufacturer has its own product structure. Docking points give that structure a defined place, so a consumer that knows nothing about the manufacturer still understands that "pump housing" is a component and "E-042" is an event.
Safety and MedTech: Device-specific components, roles and events can be added without inventing new top-level concepts — the regulated content stays connected to standard classes that every iiRDS Consumer can process.
AI and retrieval: Because a proprietary instance always sits under a known iiRDS class, an AI system can interpret custom metadata it has never seen: it knows the value is a component, even if the name is new.

Docking point vs. other iiRDS classes

Other iiRDS classes can be extended too. At a docking point, however, the standard provides no vocabulary of its own — the class is effectively empty until a proprietary extension fills it.

In RDF

Shown in Turtle for readability — proprietary classes are part of metadata.rdf in the package.

@prefix iirds: <http://iirds.tekom.de/iirds#> .
@prefix rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .

<https://example.com/iirds/ext#InfusionPumpModule> a rdfs:Class ;
    rdfs:label "Infusion pump module"@en ;
    rdfs:subClassOf iirds:Component .

<https://example.com/iirds/components/drive-unit> a <https://example.com/iirds/ext#InfusionPumpModule> ;
    rdfs:label "Drive unit"@en .