Glossary · Documentation metadata

iiRDS ProductMetadata

Also known as: product metadata, component metadata

In iiRDS (intelligent information Request and Delivery Standard), ProductMetadata is the group of documentation metadata that describes the product that content applies to: product variants, components, product features (functions and properties) and product lifecycle phases.

iiRDS term
Ontology
Information architecture

In one sentence

iiRDS ProductMetadata links content to product variants, components, features and lifecycle phases, so the right content reaches the right product.

Example

The topic “Replacing the pump seal” is linked to the component “pump housing”, the product variant “P-200” and the lifecycle phase iirds:Maintenance.

In-depth wiki articleiiRDS ProductLifeCyclePhase: linking content to the phases of a product's life

How it applies

Technical documentation: Information units are linked to products with iirds:relates-to-product-variant, iirds:relates-to-component, iirds:relates-to-product-feature and iirds:relates-to-product-lifecycle-phase. Variants and components are company-specific and must be defined in a proprietary extension; a component tree can be modeled with iirds:has-component.
Lifecycle phases: Unlike variants and components, lifecycle phases are standardized: DesignAndRealization, PuttingToUse (such as iirds:Installation), Use (such as iirds:Operation, iirds:Maintenance, iirds:Repair) and AfterUse (iirds:Disposal).
Features: iirds:ProductFeature has the subclasses ProductFunction (for a fan: cooling) and ProductProperty (adjustable). The relation is the same; the class of the instance tells them apart.
MedTech and AI: Product metadata is what keeps an answer specific to the device in front of the user. A retrieval system that filters by product variant never mixes the instructions of two similar devices — a mix-up that is a real risk when models look alike.

Metadata labels vs. physical products

Product metadata in iiRDS consists of labels for content, not models of physical items. A full product ontology, possibly in OWL, stays outside the package and is mapped to the component labels with rdfs:seeAlso.

In RDF

Shown in Turtle for readability — inside a package, metadata.rdf is written in RDF/XML.

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

<https://example.com/iirds/components/pump-housing> a iirds:Component ;
    rdfs:label "Pump housing"@en .

<https://example.com/iirds/replace-pump-seal> a iirds:Topic ;
    iirds:relates-to-component <https://example.com/iirds/components/pump-housing> ;
    iirds:relates-to-product-lifecycle-phase iirds:Maintenance .