MDMI_ — MDMI DataTypes

While a definition of datatypes is not in the specification directly, the structure of a datatype must be known to a runtime implementation so that it can execute the proper transformation. This is especially true since MessageElements can have very complex datatypes. Therefore, the specification has at least to have an explicit reference to a declarative structure that describes the MessageElement's datatype.

While the specification does not deal with datatypes directly, some restrictions on complex datatype definition are necessary for syntactic modeling. In addition, there has to be some restrictions on complex datatypes to ensure that a runtime engine will do proper transformation utilizing the maps that are linked through a business element in the central dictionary. These restrictions include: 1) that the simple datatypes be from a known standard, such as the XML simple datatypes or the Java simple datatypes; 2) that every element in a complex has a named field for the simple datatypes it contains. Therefore, the datatype for the attribute "datatype" will be changed to a datatype of "MDMIDatatype".