Table of Contents
Last updated: 5/15/2025

Unit of Information Unit of Information

UoI Basic Access

Every object contained within a Unit of Information (UoI) will have the same owner as the UoI if the owner is not set on the contained objects.

In the example below, Participant 1 owns the master object M. Since the versions V and the definitions D are all contained within the master; Participant 1 implicitly owns all the contained objects (green-dashed-area).

UoI one owning Participant

In this next example, Participant 1 still owns the master M but Participant 2 owns the first version V. This "breaks" the implicit ownership - meaning that Participant 2 will own everything contained under the first version (red-dashed-area) while Participant 1 will own the master M and the second version and its containment (green-dashed-area).

UoI two owning Participants

In the previous example - say that Participant 2 had no access to Participant 1. That would imply that Participant 2 could only see the first version and its contained objects and not being able to see the master and its identifiers, names, etc. For Participant 2 this could be perceived as broken data since a version cannot exist on its own. To prevent this, implicit read access on the path to the root of a UoI is always granted to an owner of an object within a UoI (blue-dashed-area).

UoI implicit access

Shared Access

To share information in ShareAspace all objects can have a set of Participants defined as "Co-Owners" and a set of Participants defined as "Co-Readers".

  • CoOwner - Grants listed Participants owning access to the object, i.e the same access to the object as the owner.
  • CoReader - Grants listed Participants read access to the object.

In the example below Participant 1 is the owner of the master object M and Participant 2 is set as a CoOwner of that same master object. This gives both Participant 1 and Participant 2 owner access to all the objects contained within this UoI (green-dashed-area and red-dashed-area).

UoI CoOwner/Reader Top

In this next example, Participant 1 is set as the owner of the master M - thus Participant 1 is the owner of all the objects contained within this unit of information (green-dashed-area). Participant 2 is set as CoOwner of one of the definitions and is therefore the Co-owner of that definition and all objects contained within it (red-dashed-area). Since a definition cannot exist on its own, Participant 2 is given implicit read access to the path up to the root master object (blue-dashed-area).

UoI CoOwner/Reader Definition

Ownership, CoOwner and CoReader History

Object as ManagedObject, AbstractVersion or AbstractDefinition can change ownership and have their ownership history tracked.

Every time the ownership is changed, that change will be logged into a property called ownerHistory which is a collection of OwnerHistoryEntry that records who owned it during a given period of time and who changed the ownership.

The current owner of the object is captured in the owner property itself.

Example:

Owner History

  • At T0, the ownership history will look like:
Historical Owner SetBy Start End
Participant 1 T0
  • At T1, the ownership history will look like:
Historical Owner SetBy Start End
Participant 1 T0 T1
Participant 2 Participant 1 T1
  • At Tn, the ownership history will look like:
Historical Owner SetBy Start End
Participant 1 T0 T1
Participant 2 Participant 1 T1 Tn
Participant n Participant n Tn
Important

Only the Participant owning an object can handover the ownership to another Participant.

In the same way as the OwnerHistoryEntry, objects such as ManagedObject, AbstractVersion or AbstractDefinition can have a history of Co-Owners and Co-Readers which is a collection of SharingHistoryEntry that will keep track of who was the Co-Owner or Co-Reader in a given period of time and who granted that right.

The current co-owner or co-reader of the object is captured in the coOwner and respectively coReader properties.

Example:

CoOwner History

  • At T0, the Sharing history will look like:
Historical Receiver SetBy Start End Level
--
  • At T1, the Sharing history will look like:
Historical Receiver SetBy Start End Level
Participant 2 Participant 1 T1 EDIT
Participant 3 Participant 1 T1 READ
  • At Tn, the Sharing history will look like:
Historical Receiver SetBy Start End Level
Participant 2 Participant 1 T1 EDIT
Participant 3 Participant 1 T1 Tn READ
Participant 4 Participant 1 Tn READ
Important

Only the Participant owning an object can handover the Co-Ownership to another Participant.