
Chapter 4 Business Metadata, Communication, and Search
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vocabulary. For example, the formal definition of “definition” might be
“a group of words that expresses the meaning of a term.” A rule of thumb is
that all terms used in definition text should be defined in the glossary. However,
it is possible to get into a cyclic dependency with either broader terms or terms
used in the definition. Do you really need to define the broader term “word”?
You obviously get to the place where there are classes (generalizations) that are
not useful and are certainly not worth the effort of defining. As always, the Law
of Diminishing Returns applies; this ...