System Initiative Docs

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Vocabulary ​

This is a reference to all of the vocabulary used in System Initiative.

Actions ​

Actions are specific operations that are queued up to change your infrastructure, such as creating, refreshing, updating or deleting a real-world resource.

Change Set ​

Change Sets represent a batch of changes to the components, assets, functions, and actions in a workspace. When you want to propose a change in the real world, you first create a change set to do it. Nothing you do in a change set should alter the real world.

If you are familiar with version control systems like git, you can think of a change set as an automatically rebasing branch.

When a change set is merged to head, any other open change sets in the workspace are automatically rebased against HEAD - meaning the data within them will be updated to reflect the proposed changes to the model on HEAD.

Context Menu ​

The Context Menu contains all available Actions to a Component at that time, both in the Grid and Map view. The Context Menu enables a user to edit, pin, duplicate, erase, delete, create templates, add to/remove from view and run actions on Components.

Creating a Change Set ​

Creating a change set makes a new copy of the hypergraph based on the current data in HEAD. Learn how to create a change set in the Getting Started tutorial.

Applying a Change Set ​

When you apply a change set, all of the properties and code are merged to HEAD, and any actions enqueued. Learn how to apply a change set in the Getting Started tutorial.

Abandoning a Change Set ​

Abandoning a change set essentially deletes it, and all of its proposed changes, from the system.

Collaborator ​

A collaborator is a member of a workspace. A collaborator can makes changes to the model or assets within a change set but cannot apply those changes without approval. Learn more about the different roles a member can have in a workspace.

Component ​

A component is the 'theoretical' half of a Model. It represents the configuration values you want something to have, while the Resource represents its real world values.

Credential ​

A credential is a type of component that stores secret data and has authentication functions attached to it. They are used to provide access to cloud providers, etc.

Entity ​

This word encapsulates relevant objects that can be mutated, used, or are actors in System Initiative. The Audit Trail dashboard makes use of this term to standardize all relevant objects seen in Audit Logs.

Entity Type ​

This is the type of an entity. A "Component" and a "Func" are entity types in System Initiative.

Entity name ​

This is the name of an entity. A "Component" could have the name "Server" and a Func could have the name "Validate Container Image".

HEAD is the change set that represents "the real world". It can only be altered by actions, refreshing resources, or applying change sets.

Hypergraph of functions ​

The hypergraph of functions, or hypergraph, is the data structure that powers System Initiative. It is a graph that represents all of the code, components, resources, and functions that are in a workspace. We call it a "hypergraph" because it is multi-dimensional through the use of change sets.

We know it's not an actual hypergraph. It's just less of a mouthful than 'multi-dimensional graph'.

Grid ​

The Grid is a a tile like visualization of your created Components. On the Grid page you can also see pending Actions and your Function run history.

Map ​

The Map is a visual representation of your created Components and their relationships via prop to prop Subscriptions. You can also create, edit, delete etc. from the Map.

Model ​

A Model ​

When we refer to "a model", we mean a single Component/Resource pair.

The Model ​

When we refer to "the model", we're talking about all of the assets, functions, components, resources, etc. that make up your hypergraph.

Qualification ​

Qualifications are functions that are executed to ensure that the component can be applied successfully to the workspace. An example is the qualification function that checks if the Secret you have passed into your AWS Credential component are valid.

Resource ​

A resource is the data about the real-world thing represented by a component.

Schema ​

Assets in System Initiative are defined by a Schema. Each version of the schema is referred to as a Schema Variant.

Secret ​

Secrets are encrypted data stored for a given type of credential. They are defined by a credential component.

Subscription ​

Subscriptions create a connection between properties of different components, allowing them to share and synchronize data. For example, if one component has an ImageId property and another has an Image property, you can subscribe the Image property to the ImageId. This ensures that the Image property stays up to date whenever the ImageId changes.

View ​

Views are a uniquely named and organized collection of components built to create representations of infrastructure configurations that are semantically relevant to a given workflow or user.

Workspace ​

A workspace named space where all modelling and real world representations are stored which can be accessed by a group of users. Objects such as assets, functions, components, edges, resources, secrets, views, and change sets are found in a workspace.