Ontology Layer
Map operational records to object types and link types. Query entities with provenance. Ground LLM transforms in cited context — without losing schema contracts at the pipeline boundary.
What it is
In Altius, the ontology is the shared vocabulary your pipelines, validators, and agents read from. Object types bind to registered schema contracts and backing datasets. Link types declare how entities relate. Entity instances carry checkpoint and pipeline provenance so reviewers and models can trace where context came from.
Capabilities
- /01Define business entities with primary keys, typed property mappings, and dataset bindings. Lifecycle moves from draft to published to deprecated.
- /02Model relationships with declared cardinality and join keys validated against source and target object types.
- /03Browse indexed instances, traverse neighbors, and query paths across the knowledge graph from the ontology workspace.
- /04POST /ontology/retrieve returns ranked entities with provenance citations — checkpoint ref, pipeline id, node id — and optional neighbor expansion.
- /05Dry-run semantic definitions via POST /ontology/validate. Real-time registry validation keeps contracts attached as data moves through nodes.
- /06LLMTransformNode supports groundingMode ontology_retrieve — cited snippets inject into prompts while PII-flagged columns never leave your deployment.
Platform fit
Compose
Semantic context on the canvas
Pipeline nodes consume typed object and link definitions. LLM transforms can retrieve ontology context per row. Proposals attach ontology snapshots so reviewers see semantic changes alongside graph edits.
Validate
Contracts at the semantic boundary
Object types bind to schemas in the registry — unregistered bindings are rejected. Ontology validate runs dry-run checks before publish. Schema-engine validates payloads at every stage.
Govern
Provenance you can audit
Retrieval results cite checkpoint and pipeline lineage. PII columns declared on object types feed gateway purpose filtering. Action types version governed operations against entity instances.
Sign in to open the ontology workspace, or jump straight to your pipeline library to compose flows that carry context end to end.