The basic unit of JWST data products is an exposure for each science instrument detector. Relationships between multiple exposures are captured in an association. An association is a means of identifying a set of exposures that belong together and may be dependent upon one another. JWST associations are created by the Association Generator. Using a set of association rules, the Generator filters through an Association Pool, basically a list of exposures and related meta-data, to produce Associations. These associations are then used as input to the appropriate calibration pipelines.
Link to PDF (may not be available yet): P13-2.pdf