Glossary · Information units

iiRDS Fragment

Also known as: fragment, content fragment

In iiRDS (intelligent information Request and Delivery Standard), a Fragment is an information unit that a reader understands only when additional context is provided — for example a single warning, one step of a procedure or a user-interface text.

iiRDS term
Ontology
Information architecture

In one sentence

An iiRDS Fragment is an information unit that is not self-contained: it needs surrounding context, like a single warning or one step of a procedure.

Example

The warning “Disconnect the mains plug before opening the housing”, delivered as a separate unit with its own metadata so a service app can display it next to the matching step.

How it applies

Technical documentation: Fragments allow fine-grained delivery of small, reusable pieces such as warnings, notes or user-interface texts, each with its own metadata.
Safety: A warning delivered as a Fragment must never appear without the step or topic it belongs to. Delivery systems should keep the link to that context — a warning shown alone can be misread or ignored.
AI and retrieval: A Fragment stored alone in a vector index loses its meaning. Keep a reference to the parent topic, or add the missing context before indexing, so that an assistant does not quote a step without its precondition.

Fragment vs. Topic

A Topic can be understood on its own; a Fragment cannot. The test is simple: could a reader act correctly on this unit without seeing anything else?

Fragment vs. Selector

A Fragment is an information unit with its own IRI and metadata. A Selector is not an information unit at all — it only points to a part of a file within a rendition.

In RDF

Shown in Turtle for readability — inside a package, metadata.rdf is written in RDF/XML.

@prefix iirds: <http://iirds.tekom.de/iirds#> .

<https://example.com/iirds/warning-mains-plug> a iirds:Fragment ;
    iirds:has-rendition [
        a iirds:Rendition ;
        iirds:format "text/html" ;
        iirds:source "content/warning-mains-plug.html"
    ] .