Relationships define the governed connections among Attestations, Trust Statements, evidence, source objects, prior statements, and canonical Suite objects.
Attestor uses relationships to preserve traceability and meaning across institutional boundaries without collapsing distinct objects into one record or allowing reference to transfer ownership or authority.
Relationships express governed connections among Attestor-owned objects and referenced sources. A relationship states how two objects are connected; it does not merge their identity, provenance, lifecycle, authority, or institutional ownership.
An Attestation may reference source objects, be supported or challenged by eligible governed inputs, be evaluated by an Attestor evaluation, relate to other Attestations, and participate in correction or supersession. Its relationships must preserve the distinction between the assertion and the sources used to evaluate it.
A Trust Statement must remain connected to the evaluation that produced it and to the supporting Attestation or Attestations. It may also relate to prior Trust Statements, source objects, corrections, versions, or other governed objects without inheriting their authority.
Evidence is treated as governed supporting material or an authoritative reference, not automatically as a separate Attestor-owned canonical object. Relationships must therefore identify how evidence supports, limits, contradicts, or otherwise informs an Attestation or evaluation without converting evidence into a Trust Statement.
Source objects retain their source identifiers, provenance, meaning, lifecycle, and authority. Attestor relates to them through governed references rather than duplicating them as Attestor records.
A Trust Statement may have a governed relationship to an earlier Trust Statement when later review, correction, supersession, or changed conditions require continuity of history. The relationship must preserve both the prior object and the current governed state.
Attestor may relate to canonical objects from Atlas, Navigator, Certifier, Registry, Chronicle, Anchor, and Beacon. Each relationship preserves the canonical responsibility of the source institution.
A material relationship must be explicit enough to understand the source object, target object, relationship meaning, and direction where direction matters. Hidden or ambiguous connections must not carry normative meaning.
The Controlled Values architecture establishes the relationship vocabulary and its governed meaning and direction. Canonical structured relationship fields are now exercised in production. Schemas and Validation govern applicable structural constraints, while relationship semantics remain defined here.
Normative relationships are interpreted from a source object toward a target object. Reversing the objects may change the meaning. Implementations must not assume every relationship is symmetric.
The central Attestor process can be expressed as a governed relationship chain. Each step preserves the identity and authority of the participating objects while making the institutional lineage explicit.
The supports relationship records material support; it does not itself determine the evaluation outcome. Multiple supporting relationships do not automatically produce a supported Trust Statement, and a single conflicting or contradictory input may be material depending on scope, authority, provenance, and evaluation rules.
A reference identifies another object. Derivation states that an object was materially produced from another governed basis. These relationships must remain distinct because they carry different provenance and review implications.
Supersession and correction preserve governed continuity rather than erasing history. A superseding or corrective relationship must keep the prior object identifiable and distinguish the earlier state from the current governed state. Exact lifecycle effects are defined by Lifecycle and Versioning.
Relationships to Suite objects preserve each institution's canonical responsibility. Attestor may cite, derive context from, or evaluate eligible information associated with those objects, but the relationship never converts the source object into an Attestor-owned object.
Not every relationship is valid between every object class. Relationship meaning is established here, while Schemas and Validation govern applicable source/target constraints, required relationships, cardinality, inverse representation where defined, and machine enforcement. Production objects have exercised structured references and derived-from relationships without collapsing these distinctions.
The first controlled production operation exercised structured relationships across the canonical Attestation and Trust Statement. The final production representations use explicit relationship types and target identifiers rather than descriptive relationship strings.
The operation confirmed that references and derived-from carry different meanings. A reference preserves connection and traceability; derivation preserves lineage. Neither relationship transfers source authority, and neither automatically establishes Eligibility, support, evidence sufficiency, or Evaluation Outcome.
The first operation also exercised governed correction of relationship representation. Early production representations used descriptive relationship strings. Those representations were corrected to structured relationship blocks with explicit relationship types and target identifiers while preserving the canonical identities, substantive assertion and conclusion, and production history.
The V1.0 treatment was a governed determination for this operation because the correction changed serialization rather than the material Attestation assertion or Trust Statement conclusion. It is not a universal rule that every relationship correction is non-material.
A relationship expresses a governed connection. It does not independently establish truth, authority transfer, eligibility, evidence sufficiency, lifecycle state, validation, conformance, or a favorable evaluation outcome.
The Relationships architecture is established and has been exercised in production. The first controlled operation demonstrated structured cross-object and cross-institution relationships, preserved the distinction between reference and derivation, and exercised governed correction when early relationship serialization required remediation.
Production proof does not make every relationship type valid for every object pair and does not make future relationship changes non-material by default. Source/target compatibility, materiality, lifecycle effect, versioning, and correction treatment remain governed by the applicable architecture and rules.
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