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Records

This section will detail the concept and use of records.

Definition​

A record represents the choice made at a certain time by a subject about an element model (processing, preference or condition) which may be accompanied by an information model and flagged as concerning a specific object.

Its reliability is ensured by:

  • an integrity flag
  • the identifier of the transaction through which the record has been created
  • the serials of the element model version and the eventual information model version, which can be used to re-create the exact form that was shown to the subject
  • a database state: pending (waiting for confirmation), committed (ready for use), deleted or rolled back (cancelled)
  • a status which is determined every time the record is queried, based on eventual new records, models changes or expiration
  • an origin to announce whether the value has been submitted directly by the subject (and by which means), or by an action from an operator or a peer
  • an author field and a comment field which may be used by operators or peers to explain why they submitted new values for the subject

Status rules​

Possible records statuses are:

  • valid: the record reflects the current choice of the subject and can be used as a proof
  • obsolete: the record reflects a choice that the subject made earlier, but is no longer correct because a newer record exists
  • expired: the record reflects a choice that the subject made earlier, but too long ago to be still considered correct (which means the choice of the subject should be collected again)
  • irrelevant: the record cannot be used as a proof because it either references an inactive model serial (which means the choice of the subject should be collected again) or has not been committed (for example, a two-step validation process was started but never completed)
  • unknown: the record cannot be used as a proof for other reasons; this status is mostly used internally and should not appear in the backoffice

Records VS Receipts​

Records are atomic objects stored in the database; they can be queried through the API and rendered for operators in the backoffice, but also work as constitutive bricks for receipts.

These are files meant to be either human-readable or processable programmatically and represent the choices submitted by a subject in a given context, at a certain time, thus they generally aggregate several records - one per context element.