Propertycentric

Propertycentric is a term used to describe an approach in information architecture, data modeling, and software design that prioritizes the properties of entities—their attributes or field values—as the primary means of description, storage, and query. In a propertycentric model, an object's identity is closely linked to the set of attributes that describe it, rather than being defined solely by its relationships or its behavior.

The term is used in discussions of data representations such as property graphs, attribute-driven schemas, and knowledge representation. It is often invoked in contrast to relationship-centric or behavior-centric designs, where connections or actions play the dominant role in modeling.

Key characteristics include a focus on attributes as first-class citizens, support for heterogeneous and evolving attribute sets, and schemas that emphasize property keys and value types. This can facilitate flexible data capture and exploratory querying, particularly in domains with diverse objects that accumulate many optional attributes.

Potential advantages include expressive power, easier incorporation of new attributes, and intuitive alignment with real-world objects. Limitations can include schema sparsity, increased indexing and query complexity, and challenges in enforcing data quality across many attributes.

Example: a product entity described by properties such as name, category, price, color, size, weight, and releaseDate, with different products possessing different subsets of attributes.

See also: property graph, RDF, entity-attribute-value model, schema-on-read, attribute-driven design.