SIE.5:2 - Problem

The same real-world item can carry manufacturer, supplier, enterprise, lot, serial, package, event, and temporary process identifiers. Conversely, the same character string can be reused by different issuers or at different times. Version, configuration, part-whole, and alternate-description relations can be mistaken for identity because they support some joins.

If an integration collapses those distinctions, provenance becomes decorative: the merged record no longer shows which identifier asserted what, when, or under whose rules. Contradictory events appear to concern one thing without evidence, and a master key silently becomes a domain decision.