A concept that plays an important role in the theory is that of a directed subset of a domain; a directed subset is a non-empty subset of the order in which any two elements have an upper bound that is an element of this subset. In view of our intuition about domains, this means that any two pieces of information within the directed subset are "consistently" extended by some other element in the subset. Hence we can view directed subsets as "consistent specifications", i.e. as sets of partial results in which no two elements are contradictory. This interpretation can be compared with the notion of a convergent sequence in analysis, where each element is more specific than the preceding one. Indeed, in the theory of metric spaces, sequences play a role that is in many aspects analogous to the role of directed sets in domain theory.