Attributes are items of information attached to concepts or terms, or other attributes. In this package we are concerned primarily with attributes that attach to a single concept or term, as opposed to associations which relate two concepts and/or terms (see package com.apelon.dts.client.association). A property (DTSProperty) provides information about a concept or term and has a type (DTSPropertyType) and value. A role (DTSRole) is another kind of attribute of a concept, that only applies to Ontylog concepts (OntylogConcept). It is somewhat of an exception to the general description of an attribute, because it involves a second concept. However, like a property a role also has a type (DTSRoleType) and a value, which happens to be another Ontylog concept. Qualifiers are examples of attributes of an attribute. A DTSQualifier qualifies either a property or an association. It has a type (QualifierType) and a value.
Property types are managed or retrieved using base class PropertyTypeQuery. Role types are retrieved using class OntylogConceptQuery. Qualifier types are managed or retrieved using base class QualifierTypeQuery. Properties, qualifiers, and roles can be retrieved with other information for concepts by specifying and passing a ConceptAttributeSetDescriptor in methods that retrieve or search for concepts (see package com.apelon.dts.client.concept). For terms, properties and qualifiers can be retrieved with other information by specifying and passing a TermAttributeSetDescriptor in methods that retrieve or search for terms (see package com.apelon.dts.client.term).