Server Administration > Item Type Attributes > Setting Up Documents > Key Terms and Concepts in Documents
  
Key Terms and Concepts in Documents
This section discusses document model terms and concepts at a high level. It gives you the basis for understanding these concepts so you can create a document type using the Windchill RV&S administration client.
Windchill RV&S Term
Architectural Term
Definition
Document (root)
Segment (root)
• Container for Nodes that reference Shared Items or other documents.
• Represented by the top-level Node in the Outline panel of the Document view.
Segments:
• are documents or subdocuments that contain content.
• can include or reference other Segments.
Subsegments:
• are Segments that are contained within another document.
• are included or inserted into a document which creates a References/Referenced By relationship between Nodes/Segment respectively.
• can be nested within Segments or other subsegments.
Content
Node + Shared Item
Content:
• is the term used in Windchill RV&S for a Node/Shared Item pair; the Node references the Shared Item.
• can be meaningful, for example, a business requirement, a functional test case. It can also be non-meaningful; for example, a Heading or a Comment. The criteria is defined by your system administrator on the Shared Category field.
Nodes:
• are the items of content visible in the Document view.
• surface all of the shared content via FVA fields to the Shared Items as well as contain the content-specific metadata.
• Shared Items:
• are referenced by Nodes.
• contain all of the fields that make up the shared content.
• cannot be edited directly.
• Edits are made on the Node via the Editable FVA fields and changes are actually made and recorded on the Shared Item.
• track modifications to content and reflect them in the Node.
* 
Users should not need to interact with Shared Items.
Section
n/a
• Virtual field in the Document view.
• Dynamically defined grouped hierarchy of Nodes in a document, for example: section 1.4 and its children, 1.4.1, 1.4.2 or section 3.4.2 and its children 3.4.2.1, 3.4.2.2.
Reference mode
n/a
Setting on a Node that controls how the system behaves when content is reused and modified. Options are: Author, Reuse, Share, and Version.
Category
n/a
Pick field exposed on a Node or Segment type which allows for the categorization of content items, for example: Heading, Comment, Business Requirement, and Functional Test Case.
Available options are defined by the administrator using constraints on the type.
Group document
n/a
A read-only document used for grouping or reordering content.
* 
You can create or edit non-meaningful content in a group document. The definition of non-meaningful content is in “Meaningful and Non-Meaningful Content”.