Abstract
Status: Public Draft
Document Version: v0.1
Conceptual Model: v1.0 (Frozen)
Publication Date: July 8, 2026
Last Updated: July 8, 2026
Introduction
Organizations increasingly publish information across websites, documentation, repositories, applications, services, publications, and other digital environments. While these sources collectively describe an entity, there is no widely adopted, standardized mechanism through which an entity can explicitly declare its own canonical structure.
As organizations grow, information becomes distributed across numerous systems, often requiring people and software to infer relationships, identities, and structural meaning from many independent sources. Although existing technologies support metadata, structured data, and semantic vocabularies, they do not provide a simple, standardized mechanism through which an entity may authoritatively declare its own canonical structure.
The Canonical Structural Declaration (CSD) is proposed to address this need.
What is a Canonical Structural Declaration?
A Canonical Structural Declaration (CSD) is a proposed specification that defines an authoritative, first-party declaration through which an entity explicitly declares its canonical structure.
A CSD provides a consistent, technology-independent mechanism through which an entity may declare its canonical identity, intrinsic structural characteristics, and structural relationships.
A CSD is created by, or under the authority of, the entity being declared and serves as the entity’s authoritative structural declaration.
Purpose
The purpose of a CSD is to provide a standardized declaration model through which an entity may explicitly define the structural information it considers canonical.
Rather than requiring consumers to infer organizational structure from distributed sources, a CSD enables an entity to provide an authoritative declaration of that structure directly.
The specification defines the declaration model itself rather than any particular implementation technology or software platform.
Scope
A CSD is intentionally limited in scope.
It is designed to declare an entity’s:
- Canonical identity
- Intrinsic structural characteristics
- Structural relationships
- Declaration information
A CSD is not intended to represent:
- An entity’s complete digital presence
- Every published document or resource
- A comprehensive metadata catalog
- A knowledge graph
- A website or directory
- An evaluation methodology
- An observation system
- A search optimization mechanism
The specification intentionally focuses on declaration rather than evaluation, observation, or implementation.
Conceptual Model
The conceptual model of a CSD distinguishes between the Declaration and the Subject.
Declaration
The Declaration describes the declaration artifact and may include:
- Issuer
- Version
- Status
- Effective Date
- Revision History
Subject
The Subject describes the entity through four core declaration classes:
- Entity Declaration — Identifies the declared subject.
- Identity Declaration — Declares the subject’s canonical identity.
- Structural Declaration — Declares intrinsic structural characteristics established by the entity.
- Relationship Declaration — Declares structural relationships among declared elements.
This separation preserves a clear distinction between declaration governance and the intrinsic characteristics of the declared entity.
Design Principles
The Canonical Structural Declaration is founded upon the following principles:
- Authoritative — Represents the entity’s official declaration.
- First-Party — Created by, or under the authority of, the entity being declared.
- Explicit — Declares information directly rather than relying upon inference.
- Canonical — Represents the entity’s authoritative structural reference.
- Structural — Focused exclusively on intrinsic structural information.
- Technology-Independent — Independent of implementation technologies and software platforms.
- Implementation-Independent — Defines a declaration model rather than a specific implementation or serialization format.
- Versioned — Supports explicit revision and lifecycle management.
- Extensible — Designed to support future extensions while preserving the core conceptual model.
Architectural Principle
Core declarations describe the intrinsic structural characteristics of the declared entity.
Information relating solely to publication, discovery, implementation, external resources, operational systems, or complete digital inventories does not form part of the core declaration model.
Current Status
The Canonical Structural Declaration (CSD) Conceptual Model v1.0 has been conceptually frozen.
Future work is focused on:
- Normative Specification
- Conformance Requirements
- Governance
- Extension Mechanisms
- Serialization Formats
- Reference Implementations
- Example Declarations
The conceptual model is considered stable. Future development is focused on defining the specification rather than redesigning the conceptual architecture.
Document Roadmap
The Canonical Structural Declaration is being developed as a structured document series.
Published
- ✓ Abstract
- ✓ Conceptual Model v1.0 (Frozen)
In Development
- Normative Specification
- Conformance Requirements
- Extension Model
- Serialization Formats
- Reference Implementations
- Example Declarations
Copyright
© 2026. All rights reserved.
The Canonical Structural Declaration (CSD) documentation is protected by copyright. This document defines the public abstract for the proposed CSD specification and Conceptual Model v1.0. Future publications will include the normative specification, conformance requirements, governance model, extension mechanisms, serialization formats, reference implementations, and supporting documentation.