Profile types and instances
A profile instance refers to a single entity of a profile type (for example, user, account, project, or asset).
- The profile fields are as defined by the metadata in the REST API Refers to a set of rules that define how applications or devices can connect to and communicate with each other. while creating the entity.
- A profile is identified by its unique ID in a relevant context.
- Each profile can be accessed directly by a unique ID.
Profile attributes
Every profile type includes attributes for storing more information about the profile. These attributes have a fixed length and type. The currently available attributes are the common fields (lowest common denominator) used by most applications. These attributes provide a clear context map for applications to work together.
For applications that need additional attributes, you can use the extended attributes.
Default attributes
The following list of attributes are common to all entities:
- createdTimeStamp
- updatedTimeStamp
- deletedTimeStamp
- createdBy
- updatedBy
- deletedBy
Profile type components
Each profile type has three components to its definition: the characteristic definition (properties), the relative definition (relationships to other entities), and the behavioral definition (authorization rules). All three components can be found in Trimble Profiles API specification.
- Characteristic definition: the properties and schema. Example: A chair can be described by the material used, its height, width, and weight, or weight capacity.
- Relative definition: the relationships between this concept and others. Example: A chair has more meaning when it is related to a person to sit on it and relates to a table.
- Behavioral definition: the data governance rules and authorization rules allowed. Examples: A billable account must always have an owner; Administrators can perform more actions than standard users.
By establishing functional definitions, we codify our understanding of the data: applications can behave according to definitions, which aligns our understanding and the technical implementation.
A profile type is the record that holds the definition of the entity; it defines the schema, including properties, relationships, and authorization policies. Examples of profile types include billable accounts, users, teams, projects, and more. Profile instances are specific records of a profile type with specific values for each property. Cloud Platform publishes notifications when changes are made to any profile type or profile instance. For example, events might include: a device serial number was updated, a user updated their email address, a user was associated with a billable account, and more.
Event identifiers:
- Create
- Update
- Delete
- Associate
- Dissociate
Allowing flexible definitions with spaces
A space in Trimble Profiles allows Trimble to define contextual limits to the scope of a definition. Within a space, a team or division extends profile types from the global space with their own properties and relationships or defines completely new profile types.
To learn more about spaces in Trimble Profiles, see What are spaces in Profiles?.
Property sets
Property sets can also be defined independently of a single profile type. This provides two benefits:
- a property set can be defined once and reused as part of the definition on multiple profile types.
- authorization rules can be assigned to the property set itself, which enables Trimble to write authorization policies on subsets of properties within a single profile type.
In these ways, property sets are a critical component to the classification strategy.