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Node
Introduction
This page describes the Higgins concept of I-Node.
It is similar to the Identity Gang Lexicon's definition of Digital Subject. The term was changed to eliminate any possible confusion with the term subject (or data subject) in international privacy law.
A Higgins I-Node is a representation of an Entity within a given context. The distinction is subtle but critical. In Higgins the same Entity is usually represented by multiple I-Nodes in different Contexts.
Definition
- A digital representation of a person, thing or concept.
- A I-Node has zero or more Attributes
Details
- Although not strictly required, almost all I-Nodes have a single I-NodeId Attribute in addition to whatever other kinds of Attributes they may have.
- Some of the Attributes of an I-Node may be references to other I-Nodes in the same or different Contexts. These are called I-Node Relations. For example, an I-Node representing the Entity Bob may have a "knows" I-Node Relation Attribute pointing to an I-Node representing Bob's friend Alice.
- A single person (thing or concept) may be represented as one (or more) I-Nodes in one Context and (an)other I-Nodes in other Contexts. By linking or "federating" these disparate I-Nodes one can gain a more unified view of a given person. Contexts representing different systems, organizations and entire enterprises with widely varying storage and trust models are handled using this I-Node linking approach. For example the person "Bob Smith" could be represented as two I-Nodes; the first having "bsmith" as an I-NodeId and the second having "bob" as a I-NodeId. These two I-Nodes may be in the same or in different Contexts. To express that the "bsmith" is the same person as "bob" an I-Node Correlation Attribute would be added to "bsmith" whose value points to "bob".
- Contexts can be nested (e.g. enterprises have sub-organizations, and there are systems within an enterprise/org, etc.) or related through other means (employment/HR system vs. customer system where same person is a customer and an employee). Thus linking the I-Nodes relevant to those contexts provides an overall view of an I-Node(or at least a partial "overall" view to those Contexts).
- The information contained in one I-Node is not necessarily a pure subset of the union of all of the information contained in all of the linked I-Nodes representing a person taken together. There is no consistency constraint imposed between the I-Nodes of an person. For example, a person could be represented such that their name was Joe in one I-Node in one Context and JoAnn in I-Node.