Metadata

Some topics are used by Goozzee to store its own structure. These topics are what we will call the Metadata and are grouped under one topic named ... Metadata.

When you setup Goozzee, the Metadata topic is defined as an instance of the Classes topic. In fact, all the Metadata topics are organized as a hierarchy of classes/instances. If you open this Metadata topic, you'll see that it contains three instances : Association types, Roles and Scopes, which are used to store, well, Association types, Roles, and, guess what, Scopes. :-)
These three topics are filled with default instances, but it's really easy – and you really should – increase them with your own Metadata (by simply creating new roles, new association types and new scopes).

Beware that deleting Metadata can have serious implications on your topic map. So before removing an instance of a metadata topic, make sure you know what you do : deleting a scope : the deleted scope is removed from all the topics, associations and occurrences that use it. What's more, that scope is also removed from the shortcuts of the users (and replaced with the unconstrained scope ('Any Scope').
deleting an association type : all the associations belonging to this type are updated and assigned the Default Association Type.
deleting a role : all the association members using this role are updated and assigned the default See Also role.

Anyway, a message box will ask you to confirm each time you're about to delete an association, and a second message box will warn you even more when you try to delete some Metadata association. Metadata is so essential for Goozzee's inner working that normal users shouldn't modify it, and shouldn't even see it. So the deletion of the main Metadata topics – i.e. those created during the database initialization – is simply impossible : Goozzee will prevent you from removing them.

Little Advice :

It's good practice to differentiate each type of metadata : don't define the same topic as being simultaneously a role and an association type, or a scope and a role. Even though sometimes it would seem logical to use the same topic as an instance of the roles AND of the scopes, always create separate topics for each use, and try to give them different names, using for example prefixes, suffixes, or playing with upper/lower cases. Nothing will prevent you from not following this advice, but you'll end-up with a messy classes hierarchy, that will keep annoying you every day, especially if you plan to define a clean ontology with constraints..