Topology API reference
The following topics explain the common terminology, properties, types, and more for the available topology APIs.
Terminology
In addition to the following terms, ensure that you are familiar with the important terms that are defined within the Glossary.
resource: A resource is a node in an interconnected topology, sometimes also referred to as a vertex, or simply a node. It can be anything in a user-specific topology that is designated as such, for example a hardware or virtual device, a location, a user, or an application.
edge: An edge is a relationship between resources, also simply referred to as the 'link' between resources. Edges have a label, which allocates them to a family of edges with specific behavior. It also governs how they are displayed in the UI, and an edgeType, which defines the relationship in real terms.
tenant: A tenant is represented by a globally unique identifier, its tenant ID. The default tenant ID is: cfd95b7e-3bc7-4006-a4a8-a73a79c71255
provider: A provider is usually a single data source within the scope of a tenant. The provider is a namespace for the resource's uniqueId. That uniqueId property is unique only within the scope of a provider.
status: Status is a property of one or more resources, and a single resource can have different types of status.
Each status can be in one of three states:
- open
- clear
- closed
The severity can be one of the following ratings:
- clear
- information
- indeterminate
- warning
- minor
- major
- critical
The status of a resource is derived from events, or if the resource is retrieved through the status service. It can also be supplied when resources are posted to the topology service.
Reference documentation
The Topology Service has two categories of properties, generic and user. Generic properties have fixed data types, while user-defined properties do not.
The topology service defines a family of labels for the edges it supports.
All edges created in the Topology Service should define an edge type. The following section lists the edge types that are associated with each of the public-facing edge labels. If none of the default edge types suffice, you can create custom edge types.
Use the Topology Service to group together resources of the same type using the entityTypes property, and identify them in the UI by their icon. Usually a resource has only a single entity type but as the property is a Set,
it is possible for a resource to have more than one entity type. A number of pre-defined entity types are supplied. In addition, you can create more entity types as required.
Resources have specific statuses, and in turn each status has a state of open, clear or closed.
Both vertex and edge graph elements can have multiple timestamps, as are documented here.
You can review examples that describe best-practice guidelines to provide you with practical information, such as implementation examples and code samples, that you can use to get started.