Reference Data

Reference Data is a collection of class definitions (concepts), which may be used to clarify the semantics of an information model in the domain of some specific project. Reference Data may be understood and used as a project's ontology – a set of concepts organized in a tree hierarchy used to classify items in scope of the project. Reference Data classes are stored in an information model of their own. A class definition represents a Reference Data concept. It is used to create specialized entities from a project information model, thus, making their usage semantically more precise.
A Reference Data Library (RDL) is a managed collection of Reference Data classes. A Reference Data class may also be called a "RDL class". A RDL is designed to support a given type of data exchange. A RDL, thus, applies to and is required to understand the semantics of all the files that are compliant to that type of data exchange.