Attribute groups in OASF

[akijakya]

Context: Attribute Groups in OCSF

Attribute groups in OCSF are organizational categories assigned to attributes within the schema. They clarify the purpose and importance of each attribute within an event class or object, aiding both schema authors and users in understanding the structure and intent of the data model.

Main Attribute Groups

• Primary:
  Core attributes essential to the meaning of the event or object; typically required and central to its definition.
• Classification:
  Attributes used for taxonomy and categorization; help classify and organize events within the OCSF taxonomy (e.g., category_uid, activity_id).
• Occurrence:
  Attributes related to time or duration, such as timestamps or time ranges; describe when the event happened.
• Context:
  Additional, often optional, attributes that provide extra details or enrich the event/object with supplementary context.

What Are Attribute Groups Used For?

• Schema Organization:
  Attribute groups help structure the schema, making it easier to understand, extend, and maintain.
• Documentation:
  They clarify the role and significance of each attribute for developers, analysts, and tool builders.
• Guidance:
  Attribute groups indicate which fields are essential, which are for classification, and which add context, guiding implementers on how to populate and interpret events.

In essence:
Attribute groups in OCSF are schema-level labels that organize attributes by their role and importance, enhancing clarity, consistency, and usability across the framework.

Usage in OASF

Currently this capability is not utilised in OASF, we could find the use-cases or remove it if not necessary.
Comment: groups are only displayed for class attributes as of now, objects do not have them.

[ramizpolic]

I think its viable to find a specific use-case to show the importance of attr groups when defining a schema. The attr groups would definitely be useful across OASF. For example, a group like performance in Observability Schema could be used to link multiple different attributes that correlate to performance data here https://github.com/agntcy/oasf/blob/main/schema/references/agntcy_observability/agntcy_observability_data_schema.json

[muscariello]

Before deprecating framework component or start using existing capabilities I would focus on having e2e use cases. IMO it does not really hurt to keep them there until the project reaches a level of maturity that allows us to decide what to do with that. At this stage it's hard to chose for one direction or the other.