In the scope of the assignment, we use the notions of Entities, Attributes and Value Sets to describe the semantic model of the components of interest.
Primary Entities #
There are three primary entities, that are not included in other entities:
- MD.01 — Mine Site — Primary Entity
- MD.03 — Export Certificate — Primary Entity
- MD.12 — Lot — Primary Entity — Chain of Custody
Secondary Entities #
The primary entities reference secondary entities. Secondary entities are data structures that have attributes of their own, that can be referenced by different entities and/or that can be repeatedly referenced by another entity. Following the RCM manual, the following secondary entities are identified:
- MD.02 — License
- MD.04 — Business Entity
- MD.05 — Address
- MD.06 — Geolocalization
- MD.07 — Inspection
- MD.08 — Mine Site Location
- MD.09 — Contact Details
- MD.10 — Status History
- MD.11 — Tag / Unique Number
- MD.13 — Tax
Code Lists #
Some attributes may not simply take any value allowed by a primitive type, but need to take a discrete value from a specific list, based on specific rules. These lists of potential values are specifically defined in the data model as Code Lists, and form together a Code Directory.
- MDC.01 — Certification Status
- MDC.02 — Mining Activity Status
- MDC.03 — Mineral
- MDC.04 — License Type
- MDC.05 — CoC Roles
- MDC.06 — Originating Operations
- MDC.07 — Unit of Measurement
The Lot Entity and Chain of Custody #
The modeling of data specific to the Chain of Custody is centered on the “Lot” entity, which includes all the possible data attributes occurring during all phases in the CoC (explicited in the list of “Originating operations”) and can be recorded by all CoC actors (explicited in the list of “CoC Roles”). The “Lot” provides a compact, normalized data model, that can be used in technical implementation to reconstitute the lifecycle of a lot in the CoC by backtracking based on the originating operation and the input lot(s). The compact model supports any type of lot-to-lot transformation in the CoC, be it 1-to-1, 1-to-n, n-to-1 or n-to-n.
The technical transposition of the semantic model of the Lot entity is intended to be primarily used for data capturing, data reporting and transmitting, through API, for example as JSON or XML. It is not intended to illustrate directly a structure of a relational database table(s), although the model of one can be derived from it.
