Specification · Chapter 5 of 8

Object Model

Note

Chapter 5 of the v1.0 reading path, carried verbatim from docs/Specification/ in the canonical repository. This page is one chapter of the normative specification, published on its own URL for reading and citation by chapter; the one-page edition carries all eight chapters and the citation metadata. Each concept is defined in full in the granular documents (Core Vocabulary and Models); this reading path cites them and never replaces them.

Object Model SPEC-05

Draft v1.0 docs/Specification/05 Object Model.md

Purpose

Where the Meta Model (Chapter 4) defines the abstract vocabulary, the Object Model defines the normative structure that vocabulary takes when used to build an operational model. A Model is an organized collection of Entities, Domains, Relationships, States, Lifecycles, Workflows, and Events that together describe an operational system — representing operational reality, not software implementation.

Entity

An Entity is a specialization of Object and the primary operational construct of this specification: an identifiable operational object that represents something with business meaning, existing independently of software implementations.

Every Entity shall:

The minimum conforming Entity consists of: Identifier, Name, Domain, Owner, Attributes, State, Lifecycle.

An Entity shall not exist without identity, without ownership, without a lifecycle, belong to multiple primary Domains, or have ambiguous meaning.

Domain

A Domain is an operational boundary responsible for governing one or more Entities. A Domain organizes responsibility rather than organizational structure — it represents what is governed, not who performs the work. A Domain may govern multiple Entities; primary governance shall not be shared between Domains, and relationships between Domains define cooperation but do not transfer governance.

Relationship

A Relationship is an explicit operational association between two or more Entities. It defines structural connections and does not itself represent operational behavior. Every Relationship shall connect identifiable Entities, have a defined type, and define cardinality; direction shall be explicit whenever operational meaning depends on it. A Relationship shall not connect undefined Entities, have ambiguous meaning, duplicate another Relationship without justification, or exist without a defined type. This chapter's Relationship specializes the Relationship defined in Meta/Relationship.md, whose participants are Objects, for the case in which every participant is an Entity; a Relationship with a participant that is not an Entity, including an Organization, is governed by Meta/Relationship.md (CAND-016).

Editorial note. Meta/Relationship.md (Chapter 4) frames Relationship in terms of the business meaning it conveys ("unlike a Reference, a Relationship conveys business meaning"), while Models/Relationship.md (this chapter) frames it as a structural connection that "does not represent operational behavior." Read together, these are not stated as contradictory in the source documents — meaning and behavior are different properties, and a structural connection can still carry business meaning without describing behavior. This chapter records the difference in emphasis rather than resolving it, per editorial policy: apparent tensions between source documents are flagged, not corrected, in this reading path.

Editorial note (17 September 2026). The difference recorded above was settled on 16 September 2026 by CAND-016: Meta/Relationship.md is the canonical definition of Relationship and Models/Relationship.md its specialization for Entity participants, as the paragraph above now compiles from the latter's Purpose. The earlier note is kept as the record of what this reading path flagged.

Event

An Event is an immutable record describing something that has occurred within the operational model. Events describe facts; they do not define behavior and do not replace state.

State

A State is a discrete operational condition describing an Entity's status at a specific point in time. Every Entity exists in exactly one State at any given moment unless explicitly defined otherwise.

Workflow

A Workflow is a structured sequence of operational activities that performs defined state transitions according to the rules of this specification. A Workflow represents behavior rather than structure — the counterpart to Relationship (structure) and Event (fact).

Relationship to the Meta Model

An Entity is a specialization of Object as defined by the Meta Model. It shares the Identity, Ownership, Relationship, and Lifecycle principles defined for Object, and extends them with the Domain, Attributes, and State requirements defined in this chapter.

Conformance

An Entity, Domain, Relationship, Event, State, or Workflow conforms to this specification only if all mandatory requirements defined for it are satisfied.

Revision History

Version Date Description
0.2 22 July 2026 Compiled reading path, approved by the Architecture Committee with editorial changes (Specification/Committee Review Package.md).
0.2 22 July 2026 Committee Review: "shall never," inherited verbatim from Models/Entity.md, normalized to "shall not" to match Chapter 1's keyword glossary; no requirement changed.
1.0 17 September 2026 "shall never", inherited verbatim from Models/Domain.md, normalized to "shall not" as the Committee Review of 22 July 2026 directed for this chapter; no requirement changed. Relationship section compiles the specialization sentence Models/Relationship.md gained under CAND-016, with a dated editorial note closing the earlier one; the Domain section's unsourced sentence about Domains owning Domains replaced by the governance rules of Models/Domain.md; every other sentence verified against its Models/ source as of this date.
1.0 18 September 2026 Three obligations its sources carry and this chapter did not: the ninth item of Models/Entity.md's "Every Entity shall" list, the fifth of its prohibitions, and the four prohibitions of Models/Relationship.md. The traceability check of 17 September 2026 ran forward, from chapter to source, so an obligation the chapter never compiled was invisible to it; recorded as AO-077. No requirement changed in any source document.

Source: compiled from Models/Model.md, Models/Entity.md, Models/Domain.md, Models/Relationship.md, Models/Event.md, Models/State.md, Models/Workflow.md. The Entity↔Object cross-reference reflects the explicit link added to Models/Entity.md during v0.1 stabilization. (Committee Review, 22 July 2026: "shall never," inherited verbatim from Models/Entity.md, normalized to "shall not" to match Chapter 1's keyword glossary; no requirement changed.) (17 September 2026: recompiled as v1.0 against the canonical documents as of this date; see Revision History)