Business element
A governed piece of business data that carries a term's meaning in a specific context, linked to physical columns.
Also called: data element, business data element
A business element answers what data do we hold for this, and where? It has a type, format, allowed values, quality rules and often a criticality flag, and it links down to one or more physical columns. Governance (stewards, critical data element (CDE) status, data quality rules) usually attaches here, not to the term.
Example: the term Outstanding Balance is realized by the elements Mortgage Outstanding Balance (a critical data element) and Card Outstanding Balance. The mortgage element maps to LOAN_DTL.OUTSTANDING_BAL_AMT and MTG_HIST.UPB.
Not to be confused with a business term, which is the meaning without the data.