About Nodes

Master or reference data records used to describe, qualify, or summarize transactional data in a subscribing system are managed in Oracle Data Relationship Management as nodes. For example, within a hierarchy that represents an organizational structure, a node might represent a department or a cost center. Nodes in a version can have properties called global node properties. Nodes in a hierarchy can have hierarchy-specific properties called local node properties.

Within a version, a node may be a part of more than one hierarchy. A node can have many user-defined properties that store information about the node and control the use of the node within the information systems of an organization.

The following terms are used to define the position of a node and behavior of the node within a hierarchy:

Table 5-1 Node Terminology

Term	Definition
Leaf	A node that cannot have children
Limb	A node that can have children
Child	A node directly below another node (if B is directly below A, B is a child of A)
Parent	The node directly above another node (in the previous example, A is the parent of B)
Descendant	A node below a specified node (including children and children of children)
Ancestor	All nodes between a node and the top of the hierarchy (including the parent, the parent of the parent, and so on)
Sibling	All nodes that share a parent node in a hierarchy
Orphan	A node not assigned to a hierarchy
Global Node	A node within a version.
Local Node	A node within a hierarchy.