The category manager lets you define data categories that you can bind to dropdown fields in the interface. It's grouped into two sections for editing System Categories and Custom Categories.
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System Categories are bound to system fields and can’t be deleted.
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Custom Categories are user-defined data categories. The Terminology Manager comes with a default set of custom categories that are bound to default custom fields.
The category names are displayed in a tree view, which illustrates the hierarchical nature of categories in the Terminology Manager. The category hierarchy supports three levels of list items. You can use the list-item hierarchy to add sublist items and organize them into groups.
At the top level of the tree are the category names, which are collapsed by default. You can expand a category name to see the list items the category contains. If there are sublist items within a list item, you'll find them when you expand a list item within a category.
The following example is taken from the ISO 12620 A.4 recommendation for domains, and illustrates how you can hierarchically organize the system category "domain" in the category tree view.
Data categories are essential for data management, including terminology. According to the ISO 12620 standard Computer applications in terminology - Data Categories, data categories organize the data items that appear in individual terminological entries.
In the Terminology Manager, the more general term "field" replaces the ISO concept of the data category. The term "data category" describes a more specific list of distinct values that you can edit to model a specific term attribute.
In practical terms, a data category is bound to a dropdown field in the Terminology Manager interface, and populates the dropdown field with list items. Most data categories have the same name as the fields they’re bound to.
For example, the term edit page has a dropdown field labeled "gender," which displays the list of items masculine, feminine, neuter, and other from the data category "gender."
The Terminology Manager enables you to edit existing data categories, to create your own custom field categories, and to bind these categories to new fields.