soustypes

Soustypes is a term occasionally used in technical writings to denote subtypes within a broader type. It is not a formal or universally standardized term in mainstream programming languages or data modeling, and its meaning tends to vary by context. In many cases, writers use soustype as a synonym for subtype, subclass, or a domain-specific variant of a type.

In practice, a soustype represents a more specific variant of a parent type that inherits properties from the parent while adding constraints or new characteristics. This allows systems to model diversity within a category and to apply specialized validation, semantics, or behavior for each variant. Soustypes support clearer organization of data or behavior when a single category contains distinctly different members.

Examples of how soustypes might be used include a user management domain where the parent type User has soustypes such as AdminUser and GuestUser, each with different permissions and required fields. In a medical ontology, Condition might have soustypes AcuteCondition and ChronicCondition to capture different clinical contexts. In software design, soustypes can be represented through inheritance in object-oriented models or through discriminated unions in functional designs.

Implementation approaches vary by paradigm. Subtyping or inheritance in object-oriented design models soustypes, while discriminated unions or sum types provide a alternative in functional styles. In data schemas and knowledge graphs, subtyping is expressed with constraints like rdfs:subClassOf or JSON Schema discriminators, along with validation rules that enforce the additional constraints of each soustype.

Terminology and usage differ across domains; many authors simply use subtype or subclass as the standard term. Soustypes may appear in domain-specific or bilingual documentation, and readers should rely on context to interpret the term accurately.