When you define your Ontology, you can use a wide variety of types to represent real-world definitions of the data you brought into Foundry. The types used in Foundry are categorized as Ontology types or data types:
The following types are available to build and define your Ontology.
An object type is a schema definition of a real-world entity or event, comprised of individual objects. For example, both JFK and LHR can be objects of an Airport object type.
Learn more about object types.
A property of an object type is a characteristic that informs a real-world entity or event. For example, if LHR is an object type of Airports, name and country are properties of Airports. For the LHR object, the property values would be the following:
A shared property is a property that can be used on multiple object types in your Ontology. Shared properties allow for consistent data modeling across object types and centralized management of property metadata.
Learn more about shared properties.
A link type is the schema definition of a relationship between two object types. A link refers to a single instance of that relationship between two objects.
An action type is the schema definition of a set of changes or edits to objects, property values, and links that a user can make all at once. Action types also include the side effect behaviors that happen when an Action occurs. Once an action type is configured in the Ontology, end users can make changes to objects by applying Actions.
Learn more about action types.
Object type groups are a classification primitive that helps users better search and explore their ontology.
Learn more about object type groups.
An interface is an Ontology type that describes the shape of an object type and its capabilities. Interfaces provide object type polymorphism, allowing for consistent modeling of and interaction with object types that share a common shape.
Learn more about interfaces.
To clarify the difference between object types and objects, examples are provided below. Note that the same distinction applies to link types and links.
Object type definitions, sometimes just referred to as "object types", refer to type-level information about ontology entities such as object types, link types, and action types. For example, the metadata for an object type may include display name, property names, property data types, and description. Metadata does not refer to the actual data or values of an object type’s properties or primary key; these are considered ontology data.
Object instances, sometimes just referred to as "objects", are the actual primary key and property values for specific instances of an ontology entity. For example, an Airplane object type can have an object instance with a Plane ID property having the value my_plane_id1, and a Maximum Occupancy property having value 240.
Value types are semantic wrappers around a field type comprised of metadata and constraints that can enhance type safety, improve expressiveness, and provide additional context. Value types encapsulate domain-specific data types and enforce data validation in a manner reusable across the platform. Commonly used value types include email addresses, URLs, UUIDs, and enumerations.
While field types and base types are defined statically, value types are customized within the context of a given space. As a result, users cannot create new field types or base types but are able to create value types dynamically.