bounded-context

Largest unit inside which a single, consistent vocabulary applies. See Concepts: Bounded Context.

Schema

properties:
    scope:
        type: object
        properties:
            domain:
                type: string
                pattern: "^[a-z][a-z0-9-]*$"
        required: [domain]
        additionalProperties: false
    language:
        type: string
        pattern: "^[a-z]{2,3}(-[A-Za-z0-9]{2,8})*$"
    ubiquitousLanguage:
        type: array
        minItems: 1
        items:
            type: object
            properties:
                term:
                    type: string
                    minLength: 1
                definition:
                    type: string
                    minLength: 1
                avoid:
                    type: array
                    minItems: 1
                    items:
                        type: object
                        properties:
                            term:
                                type: string
                                minLength: 1
                            reason:
                                type: string
                                minLength: 1
                        required: [term]
                        additionalProperties: false
                translations:
                    type: array
                    minItems: 1
                    items:
                        type: object
                        properties:
                            language:
                                type: string
                                pattern: "^[a-z]{2,3}(-[A-Za-z0-9]{2,8})*$"
                            term:
                                type: string
                                minLength: 1
                            definition:
                                type: string
                                minLength: 1
                            avoid:
                                type: array
                                minItems: 1
                                items:
                                    type: object
                                    properties:
                                        term:
                                            type: string
                                            minLength: 1
                                        reason:
                                            type: string
                                            minLength: 1
                                    required: [term]
                                    additionalProperties: false
                        required: [language, term, definition]
                        additionalProperties: false
            required: [term, definition]
            additionalProperties: false
required: [scope]
if:
    required: [ubiquitousLanguage]
then:
    required: [language]

Anatomy

A Bounded Context scopes to a Domain via scope.domain. That's the only structural anchor it needs; everything else inside is about vocabulary.

The optional ubiquitousLanguage array fixes the canonical terms used inside this Bounded Context. Each entry carries a required term, a required definition, and an optional avoid list of rejected alternatives. The avoid shape is itself a list of { term, reason? } entries. Naming reason as optional is deliberate: forcing a justification for every rejection tends to produce filler text rather than insight, so the schema lets a team simply state that a term is wrong without explaining why.

A vocabulary is written in one language, and language names it as a BCP 47 tag such as en or de-AT. The field is required as soon as the Bounded Context declares a ubiquitousLanguage, because translations only make sense relative to a declared source language. An entry's optional translations list carries the same concept in other languages: each translation has the shape of the main entry – its own language, a term, a required definition, and an optional avoid list for translations that were considered and rejected. Within each language there is still exactly one term; a translation is not an alias.

description and metadata are the usual free-form prose and non-semantic attachments. apiVersion is schema.esdm.io/core/v1, kind is bounded-context, and name is the Bounded Context's kebab-case identifier.