Introduction

Address formats are important in many domains, such as:

• Postal address
• E-mail address
• Phone number
• Document version address
• URL/URI/IRI/URN

but also for addressing plant items. The latter is the subject of this topic.

Addressing a plant and its plant items

Usually and address is meronymic, i.e. the addressed thing is a part of a part of a part, etc.

For a postal address that might be something like this:

although there are many flavors of this in the countries around the world.

For plant items a similar approach is:

Most readers of this topic probably will have a different (and strong) opinion, so a global standard is impossible. But the principle stands.

Concatenated address

Often all parts and all whole-part relations are being described in a data store.

In the Semantic Web world each address shall be unique, because if not any query becomes more complex. Let us take Tag Number as an example.

In ISO 15926 any address (label) is one-on-one related to an URI. In case you put all your eggs in one basket, so all tags in an industrial complex under one URI, then it makes sense to make sure that all tag numbers include that holonym under which the tag number is unique. So if the tag number is unique within a Plant, then include the plant code in the tag number, for example B14-P101 = pump P101 in plant B14. Only in case an identifier is universally unique no holonym can be included (unless you declare the universe :)) ).

A special case of concatenation is a 'temporal part' of an individual. Take for instance an actual pump that is registered in the Asset Registry with asset number AN4738282. When that pump is being installed to serve as B14-P101, and therefore will be attributed with operational information, it is necessary to extend that asset number with that tag number, so AN4738282_B14-P101, or if so preferred by Operations: B14-P101_AN4738282. Similarly when another temporal part of asset AN4738282 is being maintained, and holding maintenance information, that asset number could be extended with the applicable Maintenance Ticket Number.

Another case of concatenation: always include the revision number in the document number. That revision number as such is not an autonomous object and hence makes no sense without the applicable document number.