Cohesive Systems logoCOHESIVE SYSTEMS

Search Cohesive Systems

Ready

Search Cohesive Systems

Find product pages, building blocks, technical articles, and graph definitions.

Fibrations and Indexed Structure

Fibrations and indexed structure describe situations where each object in a base domain has a category of things lying over it.

Informally:

base object -> fiber of things over that object

This is useful whenever meaning is context-dependent:

  • Realizations over a semantic role.
  • Observations over a subject.
  • Versions over an identity.
  • Policies over a boundary.
  • Commands over an observer and target entity.
  • Processes over a correlation identity.

The Grothendieck construction turns an indexed family of categories into one total category of pairs:

(base object, thing over it)

Examples:

  • Realization can assign each semantic object a category of possible realizations.
  • An entity identity can index the versions, observations, events, and state samples belonging to that entity.
  • A boundary can index the observers, policies, guarantees, and meanings valid inside it.
  • A workflow identity can index the durable history and activations belonging to that workflow.

Fibrational thinking prevents context from being erased. It keeps clear that an observation is not just a value, a version is not just a number, and a realization is not just an implementation artifact. Each is something over a subject, identity, boundary, or semantic role.

Observer-indexed fibers can also support systems sheaf semantics, where each observer has local sections over the cuts, boundaries, and views available to it.

Related concepts: realization, observation, identity, version, boundaries, observer, process graphs, systems sheaf semantics.