# 0003: Object Fields
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- Stage: **0 (strawperson)** <!-- Update to reflect target stage -->
- Date: **2020-07-27** <!-- Update to reflect date of most recent stage advancement -->

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Stage 0: Provide a high level summary of the premise of these changes. Briefly describe the nature, purpose, and impact of the changes. ~2-5 sentences.
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Numerous SaaS Cloud Providers provide event data where the event reflects an action (Typically a CRUD action) on what can broadly be considered an "object." For some providers that Object may be a "file" wherein the existing ECS `file` fields are adequate; however other providers (Workday, Salesforce, Service Now, Zoom, etc.) an object can represent some other concept like a "record" or "setting" or "meeting." There presently isn't any location within ECS to document these as there is with "file," forcing any representation to be pushed into a custom field. This RFC proposes a new top-level field called `object` that will represent these instances.

## Fields

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Stage: 1: Describe at a high level how this change affects fields. Which fieldsets will be impacted? How many fields overall? Are we primarily adding fields, removing fields, or changing existing fields? The goal here is to understand the fundamental technical implications and likely extent of these changes. ~2-5 sentences.
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This RFC calls for the introduction of a top-level `object` field with an initial fieldset of the following child fields:

| field | type | description |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `object.name` | keyword | Name of the Object |
| `object.id` | keyword | ID of the Object |
| `object.type` | keyword | Type of Object Represented (e.g. `record`, `meeting`, `repository`, `organization`, etc.) |
| `object.additional_details` | object | Custom Key/Value pairs representing data relevant to the object |
| `object.owner.id` | keyword | ID of the Object Owner |
| `object.owner.name` | keyword | Name of the Object Owner |
| `object.owner.email` | keyword | Email of the Object Owner |


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Stage 2: Include new or updated yml field definitions for all of the essential fields in this draft. While not exhaustive, the fields documented here should be comprehensive enough to deeply evaluate the technical considerations of this change. The goal here is to validate the technical details for all essential fields and to provide a basis for adding experimental field definitions to the schema. Use GitHub code blocks with yml syntax formatting.
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## Usage

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Stage 1: Describe at a high-level how these field changes will be used in practice. Real world examples are encouraged. The goal here is to understand how people would leverage these fields to gain insights or solve problems. ~1-3 paragraphs.
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Object fields would allow for normalization of event/audit data provided by SaaS providers and facilitate the usage of ECS normalized event data to track, detect, and investigate activity across a broad spectrum of SaaS provider logs.

For example; an analyst could leverage the fields here to identify access into specific records on Salesforce; cases on Service Now; or meetings on Zoom without needing to know service specific field names and/or custom field names; They would simply be able to pivot their query on the respective `object` field and `cloud.provider` field.

## Source data

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* Cloud SaaS Providers
 * Salesforce
 * Zoom
 * Box
 * Microsoft/Office365
 * Github

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## Scope of impact
No breaking changes are anticipated as this is a net new introduction of fields.
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## Concerns

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An object is a very broad categorization, in some situations it may be hard to determine when something should be normalized into this field or another field like `file` or `package`. Additionally given the genericness of this field, a lot of finer details about the object may not be represented by this field, but rather addressed in custom key/value pairs nested under this field. Also due to the genericness of the field, the `object.type` field becomes rather critical to designate what exactly is represented within this field (e.g. is it a `record` or a `meeting`); some context might be derived from other fields in the event, but that would require some foreknowledge in order to properly search or sort. Designating specific acceptable values for `object.type` could minimize any confusion around the object being represented; however that would require specific updates to ECS to support new object "types".

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## Real-world implementations

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Stage 4: Identify at least one real-world, production-ready implementation that uses these updated field definitions. An example of this might be a GA feature in an Elastic application in Kibana.
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## People

The following are the people that consulted on the contents of this RFC.

* @drewgatchell | author

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## References

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### RFC Pull Requests

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* Stage 0: https://github.com/elastic/ecs/pull/883

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* Stage 1: https://github.com/elastic/ecs/pull/NNN
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