Terms and notation
UNIQ²Me keeps definitions, assessment answers and requirement selections separate. Use these terms consistently when writing questions, reviewing masks or exchanging results.
Questions, assessments and masks
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Scoring Factor (SF) | One yes/no question with explanations, references and an evidence rule at an identified position. It is not a numerical weight. |
| Scoring Factor Set (SFS) | Exactly sixteen SF definitions, ordered 0–F. |
| Catalog | The complete 16 × 16 questionnaire: exactly sixteen SFSs and 256 question positions, with their definitions and ordering. |
| Authoring record | The reusable definition, its provenance and content-review status. Approval of the definition does not assess a system. |
| Assessment instance | Evidence, judgments and resolved answers for a particular system boundary and evidence period. |
| Set value | Four hexadecimal digits encoding sixteen resolved answers for one SFS. |
| Complete assessment profile | Sixteen ordered set values, separated by fifteen colons, encoding all 256 resolved answers of one catalog. |
| Selected-scope assessment | Resolved answers for one SFS or explicitly selected SF positions. It is not a complete profile. |
| Requirement mask | A reusable selection of required positive answers bound to one catalog snapshot, with its own purpose, scope and review status. |
| MASKS | The library and website section containing catalog masks, SFS masks and individual-SF masks. |
| Benchmark | A specified requirement selection and acceptance conditions. A mask check tests satisfaction of that selection. |
| Canonical solution | One reference implementation and verification approach. Its guidance is separate from evidence about the assessed system. |
A selection of fewer questions is a mask over a catalog, rather than a smaller catalog. A catalog can occupy all 256 positions while still containing unreviewed placeholders. Structural completeness does not mean that its definitions are ready for operational assessment.
Positions and values
Both dimensions use hexadecimal indices 0–F. A means decimal index 10, the eleventh position.
Write named positions in SFS/SF order, for example 2/1 means SFS 2, SF 1. JSON uses explicit sfsId and sfId fields. The manuscript's older compact answer subscripts use SF first and SFS second; (0)_12 therefore describes the negative answer at 2/1. Prefer named fields or SFS 2 / SF 1 when exchanging records.
Within a set, SF 0 is the most significant, leftmost bit; SF F is the least significant, rightmost bit. A larger hexadecimal value does not establish better security.
| Representation | Meaning |
|---|---|
Assessment answer 1 | The condition is satisfied under the recorded evidence rule and context. |
Assessment answer 0 | The condition is not satisfied under that rule and context. |
Pending or null | Unresolved or unfilled; it is not an encoded negative answer. |
Mask bit 1 | Require a resolved positive answer at this position. |
Mask bit 0 | Exclude this position from the check. |
Assessment field 0000 | Sixteen resolved negative answers. |
Mask field 0000 | No requirements selected in that SFS. |
| Empty field in printed profile shorthand | Exactly 0000, retaining its position; it never means pending. |
An individual-SF comparison needs every selected answer resolved. Its unselected questions have no assessment outcome in that comparison. A complete profile requires every answer resolved; a single-SFS input requires all sixteen answers in that SFS.
Identities and versions
| Identifier | What it identifies |
|---|---|
Catalog edition author/language/YYe | An immutable published catalog in a declared author and language namespace. The final letter is the ordinal edition in that year. |
| Catalog snapshot digest | The exact resolved definition snapshot bound by a working mask. The build's semantic digest covers all sixteen SFS definitions and 256 linked SF records. |
| Release artifact digest | The exact bytes of a published artifact, recorded in its manifest. It is separate from the normalized definition-snapshot digest. |
| Mask ID and revision | A particular requirement selection and revision of its source record. |
| Schema version | The format contract of a record; it does not identify a catalog edition or mask revision. |
| Review timestamp | When content or a selection was reviewed. It does not identify an assessment or publication date. |
| Assessment date and evidence period | When a system was assessed and which evidence the finding covers. |
Draft masks use catalog.edition: null and an explicit snapshot digest. Promotion to reviewed requires a published catalog edition, a named maintainer and an accepted, named and dated review. See catalog versions and bindings.
Languages and deployment instances
An assessment instance concerns a system and its evidence. A deployment instance, such as main, staging, development, nis2 or qwen2, is a hosted working environment. A content branch uses language/instance, for example en/main, el/main or en/staging. Its domain and a template branch like v1 do not identify an immutable catalog edition. The deployment label qwen2 is separate from a catalog-author namespace such as qwen3-235b.
The content language codes en, el and fr differ from interface locales such as en-US, el-GR and fr-FR. Missing translations can display English content while preserving its source identity. An English mask keeps its original binding. Comparison is unavailable if translated or mixed definitions produce a different catalog digest; matching positions alone do not establish equivalent meanings.
The root main workflow combines available language-specific main branches at main.uniq2me.petsios.gr. Other instances use per-language domains, for example en/staging deploys to staging.en.uniq2me.petsios.gr. The base domain uniq2me.petsios.gr provides a multilingual directory of catalog instances and external deployments. It has no catalog or MASKS data of its own.
Continue with assessment and validation, assessment encoding and requirement masks.