What is a Document?

Next to what you normally understand under a document (e.g. data sheet, P&ID, Instrument Index) other collections of data are included as well, such as an input file to a calculation program. A special case is a document that represents the complete database schema of an application (or parts thereof).  

A Document in ISO 15926-7 is represented by an ontology that only represents the structure of the document and its prompts. The actual information content is kept external of the document. From the "Document" and its "DocumentCell"s reference is made to template instances that represent the information. This is done because the same information may, and most often will, be used in other documents. A document is a view on all information for an object that is available in your own Façade and in zero to many other Façades.

Topics

Click here and here to see two Topics about documents.

What is a Document Type?

Document Types are ontologies for documents. A document type defines the structure and constraints of a document instance.

Document Types are defined by the organizations and companies that use ISO 15926-7. Examples are: a Purchase Order form, a specification for centrifugal pump, an Instrument Index, a Line List, a Cable Schedule, and an input data set for the sizing of a shell & tube heat exchanger.

Since everything has its roots in the ISO standardized ontologies, this provides these organizations and companies great freedom in what information they want represented on a document.

All document types are listed in an OWL ontology for document types in a Façade of the defining user organization. Access to and use of this ontology is under the control of that organization.

In its OWL Ontology for Document Types a user organization can define its (corporate) types of document.

Parts of that user organization can define in their own Façade:

• specializations of the (corporate) document types, such as in a situation where a corporate data sheet is in imperial units, but the subsidiary in Europe requires that same data sheet in SI units.

• instances of documents, such as a data sheet for pump P104, rev. 2

Basic Document Model

The basic model for any document is shown in Figure 2 below.

Figure 2 - Basic document structure

ST-0098 (rdf:)properties

describes

The template describes all meta data of a particular document type, that is an instance of a subClassOf part4:Document. In most cases these subclasses are defined by a user organization.

isValidAt

The document will present the information that was valid at the date and time given here. This is done by fetching, using the SPARQL query scripts, the template instance of the 'hasAsInfo' template class defined for each of the various document cells of the document.

hasDescription

The document can have zero or more text strings, such as for the title.

hasAsContext

The "context template(s)" shown in Figure 4 fill the "information gap" between the document's (usually) "implicit" information representation and an "explicit" representation (as explicit as is dictated by the business needs). Implicit representations leave out a lot of detail, because a human being who is reading a document fills in that gap because he/she knows the subject. Computers are dumber, and need to have it all.

The context templates provide a basis for integrating the information shown on the document with the other lifecycle information in the Facade(s). At instance level these context templates usually are available already somewhere on the Internet, and the software shall fetch them automatically when generating a document instance. Their contents are then used for navigation by the SPARQL queries of the document cells.

hasPresentationScript

ISO 15926-7 is not about neat presentations of documents, with boxes, font types and sizes, colors, etc. It deals primarily with information representation. But of course presentation on paper or screen is important, because in the end human beings shall be able to read and interpret the information.

The rdf:Property 'hasPresentationScript', that points at zero or more instances of ClassOfInformationRepresentation, will be used to store presentation scripts in PHP.

Provided that the organization, that owns their own Ontology of Document Types of which this document type is a part, makes this accessible from the Internet, any recipient of an instance of this schema can use the Presentation Script referred to in that instance and display and/or print the document.

NOTE - If that recipient does not have the means to do that, he still has the full information content in the form of the references to the template instances, made from the document cells.

ST-0097 properties

isDocPartOf

An instance of part4:DOCUMENT_PART is can be a part of an instance of part4:DOCUMENT or of another DocumentPart (e.g. subsection of a section).

describes

The template describes all meta data of a particular document part, that is an instance of a subClassOf part4:DocumentPart. In most cases these subclasses are defined by a user organization.

hasDescription

A document part can have zero or more text strings, such as for the title of a section.

hasAsContext

The "context template(s)" shown in Figure 4 fill the "information gap" between the document part's (usually) "implicit" information representation and an "explicit" representation (as explicit as is dictated by the business needs). Implicit representations leave out a lot of detail, because a human being who is reading a document mentally fills in that gap because he/she knows the subject. Computers are dumber, and need to have it all.

The context templates provide a basis for integrating the information shown on the document with the other lifecycle information in the Facade(s). At instance level these context templates usually are available already somewhere on the Internet, and the software shall fetch them automatically when generating a document instance. Their contents are then used for navigation by the SPARQL queries of the document cells.

ST-0096 properties

isDocCellOf

An instance of part4:DOCUMENT_CELL can be a part of an instance of part4:DOCUMENT_PART or directly of an instance of part4:DOCUMENT.

describes

The template describes all meta data of a particular document cell, that is an instance of a subClassOf part4:DocumentCell. In most cases these subclasses are defined by a user organization.

hasPrompt

A document cell can have zero or more text strings, mostly as prompt for a data field, such as something like: Vapor Pressure Pv               barg

hasAsInfo

Any instance of a Document Cell points at zero or one applicable instance of a template class defined here for the Document Cell class.

hasQueryScript

An instance of a Document Cell points to an instance of the template class listed under hasAsInfo (above). The SPARQL query script fetches from that template instance ONLY the data that must be displayed in the cell. It includes the script to fetch the data that is valid at the date-time given for the property isValidAt of the entire document.

Analysis Diagrams

Click to see analysis diagrams that spell out how templates 0096, 0097, and 0098 are defined in terms of ISO 15926-2 entity data types.

Listing

Click here for a listing of an example of a Document Type.

NOTE   Please don't get confused by the fact that this example has nothing to do with the data sheet shown in the rest of this page.

Document Types

Now companies and organizations, such as ISA - The Instrumentation, Systems, and Automation Society, that want to use ISO 15926 can develop the listings for their document types, such as the one shown below:

Figure 3 - ISA Control Valve Data Sheet

(source: http://www.ccivalve.com/pdf/350.pdf)

Analysis

In the spreadsheet below this control valve data sheet is analyzed line by line.

The top part represents information about the control valve as an individual, and the second (largest) part represents membership criteria for a control valve class, of which the individual control valve is a member.

This means that when we send this for quotation to suppliers they are expected to offer a member of one of their classes, shown in their catalog. Naively one could claim that the data sheet class shall be either the same as the offered class or, most likely, a subclass of the offered class. However, there are topics that do not easily lend themselves to specialization. For example, when analyzing the body and trim material selection one cannot say that carbon steel is a subclass of stainless steel. There are circumstances where carbon steel is suitable and stainless steel is not. The solution will be in the realm of expert systems. The difference with the pre-15926 times is that all information will be available to those expert systems in a standard format.