Taxonomy System
Controlled vocabularies for annotating entities and properties across your model. Taxonomies replace free-text tags with hierarchical, shareable term structures that carry colour, icon, and selection mode metadata. Built for federated architecture governance.
Free-text tags are convenient but uncontrolled. When one team tags an entity 'PII' and another tags it 'personal-data', the result is inconsistent classification, broken reporting, and governance gaps that only surface when it is too late. The taxonomy system provides controlled vocabularies with hierarchical terms, colours, icons, and enforced selection modes, replacing ad-hoc tags with a proper governance mechanism.
What Is a Taxonomy
A taxonomy is a named, hierarchical vocabulary of terms. Each term carries a name, description, colour, and icon. Terms can nest to arbitrary depth, allowing you to model structures like 'Confidential > PII > Health Data' or 'Orders > Fulfilment > Returns'.
Taxonomies are created in the governance directory and are available across the entire project. Every entity and property in the model, graph diagrams, and projections can be annotated with terms from any taxonomy.
Common Taxonomy Examples
Taxonomies are flexible enough to model any classification concern. Here are some common patterns used in enterprise architecture governance.
| Taxonomy | Selection Mode | Example Terms | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| Domains | Single | Orders, Customer, Catalogue, Payments | Business domain assignment for each entity |
| Data Classification | Single | Public, Internal, Confidential, Secret | Sensitivity level for security reporting |
| Compliance Regime | Multi | GDPR, HIPAA, SOX, PCI-DSS | Regulatory frameworks an entity is subject to |
| Data Lifecycle | Single | Transient, Operational, Archival, Purge | Retention and lifecycle stage |
| Ownership | Single | Platform Team, Data Team, Security Team | Accountable team for each entity |
Creating a Taxonomy
Taxonomies are created in the governance directory using the New file picker.
Annotating Entities and Properties
Once a taxonomy exists, every entity and property in the project gains an Annotations section in its detail panel. This appears in both the graph editor and the projection editor.
Each taxonomy in the project is listed with its current assignment. Click Assign to open a term picker that respects the taxonomy's selection mode. Selected terms appear as coloured pills that are immediately visible when reviewing the entity.
Graph Visibility Filtering
In graph diagrams, taxonomy annotations replace the previous tag-based filtering. The filter panel in the graph editor shows all annotation terms present in the diagram. Toggle terms on and off to focus on specific areas of the model.
A node is hidden only if all of its annotation terms are in the hidden set. Unannotated nodes are controlled by a separate toggle, making it easy to identify entities that have not yet been classified.
Federated Architecture and Shared Taxonomies
Taxonomies are a core building block of NeoArc's federated architecture capability. At the estate level, a lead architect defines shared taxonomies (domains, data classification, compliance regimes) and exports them as portable artifacts. Project teams import these taxonomies and use them to annotate their models.
When baselined projections are exported back to the estate, the annotations travel with them. This means domain hulls at the estate level can be auto-composed from the taxonomy terms, removing the need for manual classification on each import.