Partitions, Categories, Groups, and Options

Another design decision was to try and limit possible property values of different records to a specific list of options. For example, a stone artifact's "material" property, should in theory include all known stones and minerals; however, in practice, a list of 20 options or less will be enough to cover the "material" property for all stones found in a particular excavation. This closed-ended approach, when properly implemented, may help to promote consistency.

Options were assigned to groups and often, the “Unassigned” and “Unknown” options were added to a group to complete its partition.

This general idea of closed-ended options was further expanded to include required/optional and singular/multiple options.

As an illustration, we may define the following groups in the ceramics module:

• Scope [Single Artifact, Basket (a collection of similar artifacts)] (required/singular)
• Material: [Unassigned, Unknown, Earthenware, Stoneware, Porcelain] (required/singular)
• Cultures: [Yarmukian, Wadi Rabah, Khirbet Kerak, ...] (optiona/multiple)
• Periods: [Neolithic, Chalcolithic, ...] (optional/multiple)

Due to the potentialy large number of groups required to characterize properties of any specific record, the groups themselves are organized by categories.

Each module has its specific Categories/Groups/Options design, commonly referred to as the "Trio".