dOclike

dOclike is a term used in theoretical discussions of data models to describe a family of document-oriented, object-based representations that treat documents as first-class citizens. A dOclike model combines the hierarchical, human-readable structure of documents with the flexibility of object-oriented data, allowing metadata, sections, links, and provenance to be modeled and manipulated as data objects.

Core concepts in dOclike systems include: a document root that encapsulates content and metadata; sections or blocks as nested objects; metadata stored as key-value maps; cross-references or links expressed as identifiers to other documents; and support for versioning or provenance information. The approach aims to balance human-friendly authoring with machine-friendly querying, validation, and transformation.

Syntax and data model in a dOclike representation typically feature a document as a mapping with fields such as id, type, meta, content, and references. The content field is often an array of sections, where each section has a heading and a body. References hold identifiers to other documents, enabling graph-like connections. Supported data types generally include strings, numbers, booleans, dates, and nested objects. Serialization targets can resemble JSON-like or XML-like structures, or other document-oriented encodings suitable for storage and interchange.

Example (illustrative): a document might be represented as

{ id: "d1", type: "article", meta: { author: "A. Writer", date: "2025-12-01" }, content: [ { section: "Intro", body: "..." } ], references: ["d2"] }

Applications and discussion: dOclike remains largely theoretical or experimental, offering a framework for combining document semantics with object-like data models. Related areas include document-oriented databases, markup languages, and schema-driven content stores. See also: document model, object data model, schema validation.