MasterItemReference Field in depth
A MasterItemReference is a metadata field type that can reference other items. That is also why you must select an item type when creating a MasterItemReference.
Everything in Digizuite shares the same common base type called item. Everything means an asset is an Item, a user is an Item and a media format is an Item, etc.
The strength in this data structure is that it allows some very generic code that allows us to query and update everything the same way. For instance, you can set metadata on an asset (which makes sense), BUT you can also set metadata on a user or a media format (which does not make sense).
The downside is the code becomes unreadable…
One of the benefits of this data structure is that we can reference other Items.