Introductory Concepts

As you begin your Altana journey, here are a few helpful concepts:

Edge: The link between entities in the graph. These links can be shipment data, ownership information, or describe a relationship. You can think of nodes as the "verbs" in a sentence: a company ships to facility.

Node: An object representing an entity within the graph; for example a company or a facility. You can think of nodes as the "nouns" in a sentence: a company ships to facility.

Value chain: The multi-tier transformation of a single product, from initial conception to end item. An organization can have many value chains associated with the products they buy and sell. It can be helpful to remember two things about value chains:

1. Value chains are product specific.

2. Value chains include both suppliers (upstream) and customers / distribution (downstream).