Glossary

This chapter collects the core terms that appear throughout the book. Skim it when you encounter unfamiliar terminology or need a refresher on how concepts relate to one another in Trible Space.

Attribute

A property that describes some aspect of an entity. Attributes occupy the middle position in a trible and carry the ValueSchema (or blob-handle schema) that interprets and validates the value. Modules mint them with the attributes! macro, so they behave like detached struct fields: each attribute remains independently typed even when many are combined to describe the same entity, preserving its individual semantics. Provide an explicit 128-bit id in the macro when you need a canonical column shared across crates or languages; omit the literal to derive a deterministic id from the attribute name and value schema (the macro calls Attribute::from_name for you), which is handy for short-lived or internal attributes.

Blob

An immutable chunk of binary data addressed by the hash of its contents. Blobs store payloads that do not fit in the fixed 32-byte value slot—long strings, media assets, archived TribleSets, commit metadata, and other large artifacts. Each blob is tagged with a BlobSchema so applications can decode it back into native types.

Blob Store

An abstraction that persists blobs. Implementations back local piles, in-memory workspaces, or remote object stores while presenting a common BlobStore interface that handles hashing, deduplication, and retrieval.

Commit

A signed snapshot of repository state. Commits archive a TribleSet describing the workspace contents and store metadata such as parent handles, timestamps, authors, signatures, and optional messages. The metadata itself lives in a SimpleArchive blob whose hash becomes the commit handle.

Commit Selector

A query primitive that walks a repository’s commit graph to identify commits of interest. Selectors power history traversals such as parents, nth_ancestor, ranges like a..b, and helpers such as history_of(entity).

Entity

The first position in a trible. Entities identify the subject making a statement and group the attributes asserted about it. They are represented by stable identifiers minted from namespaces or ID owners—not by hashing their contents—so multiple facts about the same subject cohere without revealing how the identifier was derived. Ownership controls who may mint new facts for a given identifier.

PATCH

The Persistent Adaptive Trie with Cuckoo-compression and Hash-maintenance. Each PATCH stores all six permutations of a trible set in a 256-ary trie whose nodes use byte-oriented cuckoo hash tables and copy-on-write semantics. Shared leaves keep permutations deduplicated, rolling hashes let set operations skip unchanged branches, and queries only visit the segments relevant to their bindings, mirroring the behaviour described in the deep-dive chapter.

Pile

An append-only collection of blobs and branch records stored in a single file. Piles act as durable backing storage for repositories, providing a write-ahead-log style format that can be memory mapped, repaired after crashes, and safely shared between threads.

Repository

The durable record that ties blob storage, branch metadata, and namespaces together. A repository coordinates synchronization, replication, and history traversal across commits while enforcing signatures and branch ownership.

Schema

The set of attribute declarations and codecs that document and enforce the shape of data in Trible Space. Schemas assign language-agnostic meaning to the raw bytes—they are not the concrete Rust types—so any implementation that understands the schema can interpret the payloads consistently. Value schemas map the fixed 32-byte payload of a trible to native types, while blob schemas describe arbitrarily long payloads so tribles referencing those blobs stay portable.

Trible

A three-part tuple of entity, attribute, and value stored in a fixed 64-byte layout. Tribles capture atomic facts, and query engines compose them into joins and higher-order results.

Trible Space

The overall storage model that organises tribles across blobs, PATCHes, and repositories. It emphasises immutable, content-addressed data, monotonic set semantics, and familiar repository workflows.

Value

The third position in a trible. Values store a fixed 32-byte payload interpreted through the attribute’s schema. They often embed identifiers for related entities or handles referencing larger blobs.

Workspace

A mutable working area for preparing commits. Workspaces track staged trible sets and maintain a private blob store so large payloads can be uploaded before publishing. Once a commit is finalised it becomes immutable like the rest of Trible Space.