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Builder Platform Team Glossary

This glossary page is meant to explain advanced terms used by the Platform Team. If you are a Builder user or you want to understand the general concepts of the Witboost Builder, we recommend checking out the Builder User Glossary instead.

note

If you're part of the Platform Team, we still encourage going first through the User Glossary as there are concepts a Platform Team member must be familiar as well.

Entity​

Entities are the core of the Builder module. They are defined as YAML files, and for systems and components the content of these files depend on the type of entity chosen for development. There are two types of entity content for systems and components: Legacy (v1) and Skeleton (v2) entities, which completely change the available features for edit and reverse provisioning.

When an entity is registered into Witboost (by creating it using a template or by registering an existing catalog-info.yaml file) a Location entity is saved into the database. This Location gets then processed into the appropriate entity.

Skeleton entites​

A Skeleton Entity is a dynamic, templated entity introduced in Witboost 2.3 and later.

  • Must contain %SKELETON at the very top of catalog-info.yaml.
  • Uses Nunjucks templating to inject values dynamically.
  • Reads editable data from a separate parameters.yaml file.
  • Fully compatible with v2 Creation, Edit, and Reverse Provisioning Templates.
  • Preferred model for all new systems and components.

Skeleton Entities offer:

  • Cleaner separation of structure (catalog-info.yaml) and content (parameters.yaml)
  • Safer editing via visual wizards
  • Improved UI comparisons and field-level updates

Legacy entities​

A Legacy Entity is any system or component that was created before Skeleton Entities were introduced (i.e., before Witboost 2.3), or that does not contain the %SKELETON directive at the top of its catalog-info.yaml.

  • Fully static: All its metadata are hardcoded directly in the catalog-info.yaml YAML file.
  • Edited directly via catalog-info.yaml — both by users and by automation tools.
  • May require more YAML knowledge for editing or maintenance.

Location entities​

A Location entity holds a reference to the source entity's catalog-info.yaml. The first processing of the location inserts the related entity in the Witboost entities. Then each location is periodically read again to detect changes and update the related entity in the Witboost entities.

Practice Shaper​

The Practice Shaper is the main and most impactful Witboost setting that models the platform entities (domains, systems, components, templates) as nodes and their relationships of a fully-configurable property graph of a set of Data Landscapes. It defines which systems and components can exist in Witboost and how the relate among each other. This is configuration is defined by the Platform Team to model your organization need. If you want to know more check out this section of the documentation.