The Information Layer of the Essential Meta Model is where elements concerning information and data are captured and managed. This tutorial introduces the Information Layer and gives an overview of the main constructs available for modelling Information Architecture.

As with the other layers of the core meta model, the Information Layer is split into the following views:

• Conceptual - where we define the ‘what’. In information terms this means ‘what’ information concepts are required within each business domain.
  • For example, Customer is an information concept that is used by many parts of the business.
    
• Logical - The logical area is where we define the ‘how’. In information terms this is the next level of abstraction down, where we define ‘how’ the information concepts are used, for example Marketing and Production might both require different views of the same Customer concept. The logical view will define these Views of the concepts in terms of what information each contains and follow through to the specific technology used to manage it.
• Physical - The physical information view captures the store where a particular View of information is managed.

The major constructs for capturing Information Architecture elements are shown in this diagram. The following definitions describe and provide some examples of each construct.

Conceptual Layer

• Information Architecture Objective - A strategic goal associated with the Information Architecture.
  • Example - We will reduce the duplication of information stores.
    
• Information Architecture Principle - High level rules that govern the manner in which information concepts are managed by the enterprise and provide the context for designing and defining how these concepts will be realised.
  • Example - Single Master Source of Information.
• Information Concept - the fundamental Information elements that are used by the organisation in the course of running the business.
  • Example - Customer, Delivery Method, Employee, Order, Product, Return, Warehouse, Work Order, Client, Client Risk, Dealer, Fund, Market
    

Logical Layer

• Information View - A logical view of an Information Concept, normally with a specific set of attributes that are of interest for a particular view. In practice, it is often enough to capture the views using meaningful names without having to capture all the attributes for each view (see note above). Examples:
  • Customer::Customer Services View
  • Customer::Marketing View
  • Customer::Warehouse View
  • Product::Marketing View
  • Product::SKU
  • Client Risk::Compliance View
  • Client Risk::Marketing View.
    
Information Views have fully-qualified names that are managed automatically by Essential Architecture Manager. These fully-qualified names are constructed from the Information Concept that this is a view of and the specific view name. By default, these are constructed as shown above: Concept::View
• Information Representation - A representation of an Information View using a specific technology, such as: XML schema, Relational Database Table(s), paper form.

Physical Layer

• Information Store - describes a physical instance of an Information Representation and the role that the particular Information Store plays, e.g. Production Database, Test Database. Information Stores are then deployed to physical Technology Instances, enabling both simple and complex, distributed physical data architectures to be captured.
  • Example - Marketing Customer Database::Production::Order Database::Test