Last modified: Mar 13, 2023

Terms

Description of the most common terms used in the documentation for Altinn Studio.

Actor

An actor is an organisation or person that a user/system is acting on behalf of. As an example, User A can fill out a form on behalf of Organisation B.

deprecated term: Reportee

Actor List

The Actor list is a list of persons and organisations that a user can act on behalf of. This right is given through roles or rights delegations.

deprecated term: ReporteeList

Actor Type

The type an Actor can be. Typically a person or organisation, but also sub-types of organisations.

deprecated term: Reportee Type

Actor Type Requirement

The requirent an app has for the Actor. Typical checked when an app is instantiated.

deprecated term: Reportee Type Requirement

Altinn

Norway’s E-Government platform. Launched December 4th 2003. Read more on altinn.no

Altinn Apps

Altinn Apps is the infrastructure for running apps developed in Altinn Studio. Each organisation that is using Altinn Studio will have its own Altinn Apps Kubernetes cluster, isolated from other organisations.

See Altinn Apps application architecture or deployment architecture.

Altinn CLI

The command-line interface for the new APIs in Altinn.
Is used by service owners for retrieving data submitted by users, for instantiating and for updating status.

https://github.com/altinn/altinn-cli/

Altinn Platform

Altinn Platform contains reusable microservices with functionality that can be used by apps. Platform can also be used directly by service owner systems using Altinn CLI and Maskinporten.

Currently these microservices are part of Platform: Authorization, Authentication, PDF, Profile, Register, and Storage.

Altinn Platform is running in its own Kubernetes cluster.

See Altinn Platform solution architecture and [deployment architecture]

Altinn environment

An Altinn environment is an isolated group of several Altinn solutions functioning together.

  • AT - Acceptance testing of Altinn Studio, Altinn Apps, Altinn Platform and SBL.
  • TT02 - App/service test environment used by the app and service owners.
  • Production - The production environment.

Altinn Studio

Altinn Studio are our tools for app development.
Consists of Altinn Studio Designer, Altinn Studio Repos and a local code editor / development tool (e.g. Visual Studio Code).

Lets the developers create, edit, test and deploy applications. The apps are deployed as containers to a seperate infrastructure called Altinn Apps.

https://altinn.studio

Altinn Studio Designer

Altinn Studio Designer is a web-based tool for creating, editing and deploying apps.
In Designer, it should be easy to create apps by re-using and configuring pre-made components.

Altinn Studio Repos

Altinn Studio Repos is the solution where each app is stored and versioned as a Git repository.
No matter which tool is used for development (Designer, Code, or something else), the app is stored in Repos.

Api

Application Programming Interface.

App

Short for Application. App is the name that is given to an app. It is used as repository name, as part of AppId and in different metadata. Inside an org, the app needs to be a unique name. See also Application.

Deprecated terms: AppName Service

AppId

An AppId identifies a given application. It has the following pattern [org]/[app-name]. The app-name is the same as the name of the app repo.

Application

An application created in Altinn Studio is called an app, short for application. Apps are deployed to an Altinn Apps environment. The app provides two things:

  • an interactive user interface for users wishing to submit data to an organisation, e.g. to fill out a form manually, to read information or to sign an agreement;
  • an api that client applications can interact with.

The application also has a metadata representation in the application repository (platform storage), which defines the various element types that an instance of an application can have.

deprecated term: Service

Apps

Short for Altinn Apps. See Altinn Apps

Application Developer

A user developing applications in Altinn Studio.

Org

Short for organisation. Organisation is the entity responsible for an app. Typically identified by an unique acronym, e.g. SKD, NAV, OSLK.

Deprecated terms: Application Owner Service Owner

Data

A representation of a data element which is stored in the Altinn Platform.

deprecated term: FormElement?

Event

A record of activites on a specific instance.

Instance

An instance of an application for a specific instance owner, is represented as an object. Is created by an organisation or instance owner. It contains information of the formdata and attachments stored associated with the instance.

deprecated term: ReporteeElement

Instance Owner

The person or entity that is responsible for submitting an instance of an application to an organisation.

deprecated term: Reportee

User

The user which is logged in in Altinn and performs actions on behalf of an instance owner. A user and an instance owner can be the same entity.

Kubernetes

A system for managing docker containers. See also: Relevant definitions within Kubernetes

React

The framework used for developing UI components.

PAP

Policy Administration Point.

PDP

Policy Decision Point.

PEP

Policy Enforcement Point.

PIP

Policy Information Point.

PRP

Policy Retrieval Point.

SBL

The Altinn 2 end user solution (SluttBrukerLøsning).

SBL Bridge

Applicaton that exposes SBL components as REST interface to Altinn Platform components. See all issues on GitHub related to SBL Bridge.

Stateful App

A stateful app uses Altinn Platform to store data

Stateless App

A stateless app is an application where no data is stored in the platform. This could be an app acting like a proxy to some external API. State could potensially be stored in the external API, so the term stateless is limited to how the App is not using any state in Altinn Platform.

Process

The set of tasks a certain app is made of, i.e. data, signing, payment etc. In Altinn Studio we use a *.bpmn file for the process.

deprecated term: Workflow

XACML

XACML stands for “eXtensible Access Control Markup Language”. The standard defines a declarative fine-grained, attribute-based access control policy language,[2] an architecture, and a processing model describing how to evaluate access requests according to the rules defined in policies.

Altinn Studio Apps uses the XACML standard for defining Policies for apps, the authorization architecture, and the request and response between PEP and PDP.