Skip to content Learn about the access keys available for Metadata.NSW
A NSW Government website
NSW Government
Metadata.NSW

Concept help - Property

Table of Contents

A Property is an attribute common to all members of a set of things defined by an Object Class.

A property is a characteristic of an object class of interest. For example, the object class Person can have characteristics such as sex and date of birth. These characteristics are referred to as properties.

The union of a specific property with a specific Object Class creates a Data Element Concept. The above mentioned examples create the data element concepts Person—sex and Person—date of birth.

ISO/IEC 11179-3 Section 11.2.2.2

Property is a class each instance of which models a property (3.2.100), a quality common to all members of an object class (3.2.88). A property may be any feature that humans naturally use to distinguish one individual object from another. It is the human perception of a single quality of an object class in the real world. It is conceptual and thus has no particular associated means of representation by which the property can be communicated.

A Property may have a data_element_concept_property association (11.2.3.1) with zero or more Data_Element_Concepts (11.2.2.3).

Tips for creating Properties

Properties are specific attributes from things we wish to collect information about. Good names for properties are short, descriptive nouns.
  • Be generic: A property should apply to all members of an Object Class
  • Properties are unitless: They should be describe some aspect of a thing, without prescribing how that aspect is measured. For example, height is an attribute of all people regardless of how it is measured.

Fields available on this metadata type

Field ISO definition and Registry Help (where available)
Name The primary name used for human identification purposes.
Definition Representation of a concept by a descriptive statement which serves to differentiate it from related concepts. (3.2.39)
Target Stewardship Organisation Stewardship Organisation the user selected when they create the item, which is where they wanted to item to end up in.
Is Federated
Is Not Federable
Version Unique version identifier of this metadata item.
References Significant documents that contributed to the development of the metadata item which were not the direct source for the metadata content.

Citations in Metadata.NSW should be formatted in the author-date style, as detailed in the Australian Government Style Manual. 

Please note that Metadata.NSW includes the full URL in angle brackets in citations for accessibility purposes.

Structures for common resource types include:
 
Entire website
  • Structure: 
    Author A (Year) Name of website, Short URL [optional], accessed Day Month Year. <url>
  • Example:
    APSC (Australian Public Service Commission) (2021) Australian Government Style Manual, stylemanual.gov.au, accessed 3 October 2021. <https://www.stylemanual.gov.au/>
Webpage written by an organisation
Webpage with authors listed
Online document
  • Structure: 
    Author A (Year) Title of document, Organisation Name or Name of Website, accessed Day Month Year. <url>
  • Example:
    Western Australian Government (n.d.) Island guide, Rottnest Island, accessed 31 December 2019.<https://www.rottnestisland.com/visit/guides-tips>

 

For more information and additional formats, see the Australian Government Style Manual, ‘Author-date’.
Origin The source (e.g. document, project, discipline or model) for the item (8.1.2.2.3.5)
Comments Descriptive comments about the metadata item (8.1.2.2.3.4)
Deleted The date after which the item has been soft deleted and is no longer visible in the registry

Custom Fields

Field Short definition Long definition
Admin Only A field for capturing administrative information.

This field was created by the Department of Education. Content to be captured can include:
 

  • Reasoning for Property creation
  • Tips, tricks and guidance on how the property can be used in other items like Data Element Concepts and Data Elements

Official Definition

Quality common to all members of an Object Class ISO/IEC 11179 - Clause 3.2.100