#!xml

<Identities>
.
<child_elements>...</child_elements>
.
</Identities>

The Identities tag has no generated attributes. The start and end tags enclose a series of Identity tags, discussed in the next section, that are children of the Identities tag.

There will be a single Identities tag generated by OYSTER in each Identity output file. This tag encloses all the identified identities defined by the Identity tag discussed in the next section.

1.3.1 <Identity> Tag

#!xml

< Identity Identifier="Unique_Oyster_gernerated_ID" CDate="Date">
.
<child_elements>...</child_elements>
.
</Identity>

The Identity tag contains two attributes. The start and end tag enclose a series of Attribute tags, discussed in the next section, that are children of the Identity tag.

• Identifier
  • OYSTER assigns this attribute the value of a uniquely generated OYSTER ID.
  • This ID is created to uniquely define the real world entity in which the child Attributes and References tags define.
• CDate
  • Denotes the date in which the identity was added to the .idty file.
  • Can be used in conjunction with the Modification tags to help backtrack where the identities originated from.

One Identity element will be defined for every unique real-world entity (cluster) discovered by the OYSTER runs.

1.3.2 <References> Tag

#!xml

< References>
.
<child_elements>...</child_elements>
.
</References>

The References tag has no generated attributes. The start and end tags enclose a series of Reference tags, discussed in the next section, that are children of the References tag.

There will be one corresponding References tag generated by OYSTER in the Identity output file for every unique Identity tag defined by OYSTER.

1.3.2.1 <Reference> Tag

#!xml

< Reference>
.
<child_elements>...</child_elements>
.
</Reference>

The Reference tag has no generated attributes. The start and end tags enclose a series of Value tags, discussed in the next section, that are children of the Reference tag.

There will be one corresponding Reference tag generated by OYSTER in the Identity output file for every input source reference processed by OYSTER.

1.3.2.1.1 <Value> Tag

#!xml

<Value>A^AttributeValue1|B^AttributeValue2|…<Value/>

The Value tag has one no generated attributes. This tag contains all the attribute values that make up a reference. Each attribute is pipe (|) delimited and each attribute has a corresponding identifier concatenated to the front of the value that directly relates the part of the Value to an Attribute Tag through the Tag attribute.

Example

OYSTER is designed to analyze every reference in a provided source and consolidate the unique values of the attributes into a unique identity that is discovered using the matching rules defined for the OYSTER run. Each discovered identity is stored using the tags discussed above. An Identity document generated by an OYSTER run is illustrated in Figure 8.

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