Define terms

Before you create terms, you must define their meaning and use for the organization to ensure clarity and compatibility among departments, projects, or products.

Here are some tips:

If the term name is long, use spaces instead of underscores or hyphens to break up the name. Otherwise, when long names are shown in results tables, the name does not wrap and the adjacent columns are narrow. For example, instead of Northeast_Office_Billing_Address, use Northeast Office Billing Address.
Define term names and descriptions according to the standards of the International Organization for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical Commission (InterISO/IEC 11179–4):
- Write term names in the singular form.
- State term descriptions as a phrase or with a few sentences.
- In descriptions, do not include definitions of other concepts or terms.
- Phrase term descriptions without embedded rationale, functional usage, procedural information, or definitions of other concepts.
- Phrase term descriptions affirmatively. Explain what a term is rather than just what it is not.
- Use only commonly understood abbreviations in term descriptions.
- Make the term description precise, unambiguous, and concise. Express the description without embedded rationale, functional usage, or procedural information.
- Avoid descriptions that use other term descriptions.
- Use the same terminology and consistent logical structure for related descriptions.
- Be appropriate for the type of metadata item that is being defined.

Note: The names of glossary assets are case-sensitive. It means that for example terms Address and ADDRESS are treated as two independent assets.

A term with different meanings

If departments, projects, or product lines have different meanings for the same term, review all definitions together and have subject matter experts identify a common definition. If a common definition is not possible, create several terms from the single term and identify the context for the term in the term name. Terms can have the same name only if they are in different categories. In this scenario, the category that contains the term gives you added information about the term.

Example

For example, the term Address might mean Shipping Address to Distribution, Bill To Address to Accounting, and Contact Address to Sales. You might define the term in one of the following ways:

Create one category with different terms: In the same category, create terms Shipping Address, Bill To Address, and Contact Address. In the Short Description and Long Description fields of each term, give information that is specific to the relevant department.; With this method, you create unique terms.
Create separate categories where each category contains a term with the same name: In the Distribution, Accounting, and Sales categories, create the term Address. Each term is contained by a different category, which indicates that the term is specific to each department.; With this method, the category that contains the term gives added meaning to the term.

When you define term names, be familiar with how users find and display terms in IBM® InfoSphere® Information Governance Catalog. For example, terms such as Billing Account Number and Account Number are shown before most other terms in the search results for the string Account Number. If you know how users access the terms, you can determine when to add qualifying words to term names and when to include more details in term descriptions.