Let’s have a magazine example.
As the analyst for Glossary, I am often asked to explain what this product is for and how it works. We have a lot of materials – text on the web, brochures, user guide, presentations, etc. But they mostly use software and data warehouse language as well as examples from banking which does not have to be easy to imagine for everyone. Today I illustrate the principle of Glossary without using data-warehouse or banking terms.
Imagine a magazine.
Magazine consists of sections. Both magazine and sections have some features, e.g. magazine has a name, section has a page numbers on which starts and ends. There are different kinds of section – for example Introduction or Big Interview.
It could look like this:
What is the physical structure of magazine? It consists of pages. Each page contains some text, page number. If the section starts at that page, then it contains also a heading.
Now you probably want to capture where in the paper magazine (second picture) you can find the content (first picture). Maybe you want to document how the same content is represented in another form – such as online magazine. You also might ask what impact will have if you change some text on page 5. And that is – in nutshell – exactly what Glossary is here for – to define a common language for the information owners and technical designers.