affiliationto

Affiliationto is a relational term used in information systems and data modeling to denote the directed connection from an entity, typically a person or agent, to an organization, group, or entity to which the actor is connected. The relation expresses membership, sponsorship, or formal association and can encode temporal or role-based information.

In graph-based representations such as RDF or property graphs, affiliationTo functions as a predicate or edge type. It is often accompanied by attributes such as startDate, endDate, role, status, and source, enabling queries about current or past affiliations, tenure length, and responsibilities.

Modeling considerations include the directionality (from individual to organization versus reverse), cardinality (one person may have multiple affiliations), and naming conventions. It is commonly aligned with standards or ontologies that describe organizational relationships, such as FOAF or schema.org's Organization and OrganizationRole constructs, though the exact predicate name affiliationTo is not standardized and may vary by schema.

Applications include human resources information systems, academic affiliation tracking, professional networks, and membership databases, where affiliationTo supports queries like “which organizations is person X affiliated with” or “what role did person Y hold at organization Z.” Data governance issues include ensuring provenance, privacy, and the interpretation of ongoing versus ended affiliations.

Example: In a dataset, a record might assert that Alice Smith affiliationTo University of Example with startDate 2010-09-01 and role Professor.

See also: affiliation, membership, organizational relationship, role, graph database edge, RDF predicate.