The message variables are primarily described using a hierarchical table – the hierarchy information is implied by the indentation amount of the first column. You can see the XML schema diagrams and example messages in the appendices. The table has 5 Columns:
-
Tag/Attribute Name – this contains the name of the tag (or the name of the attribute of a tag)
-
Data Type – this gives the valid data type that a tag or attribute can contain
-
Max Length – this gives the maximum length for the contents of a tag or attribute. If a “-“ is in this column, then the tag or attribute has no max length, or it is a special type (like a Boolean for example)
-
Mandatory or Always present – for input messages, this is whether or not the tag or attribute is required for a valid message & for output messages this is whether the tag or attribute will always be present in the message
-
Comment – this gives a brief description of the function of the tag or attribute along with anything else worth noting in relation to that tag or attribute
Rows in orange are tags that do not have any content (i.e. they can have attributes, but they don’t have
any content apart from child tags).
Rows in white are either tags that have content, or are attributes (marked so) of the containing tag.
|
Tag/Attribute Name |
Data Type |
Max Length |
Mandatory or Always Present |
Comments |
||
|
RootTag (no attributes or content, only child tags) |
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|
ChildTag (has no content) |
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|
AnAttribute (attribute) |
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|
AnotherChildTag (has content) |
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NOTE: The Mandatory/Always Present fields take into account their scope in the XML hierarchy – if a tag is
labelled as Mandatory, then it is mandatory if its parent tag is present. The same applies to a tag’s presence
in the response message.
This simple table would represent the simple XML message (not including the SOAP envelope or body):
<RootTag>
<ChildTag AnAttribute=“SomeValue”>
<AnotherChildTag>SomeValue</AnotherChildTag>
</ChildTag >
</RootTag>
The possible values for the data types are detailed in the table below
|
Data Type |
Description |
|
N |
Numeric – only numbers allowed |
|
A |
Alpha – any printable character is allowed |
|
B |
Boolean – only TRUE or FALSE are allowed |
|
– |
Special types – these variables only allow a specific set of values. Details of the allowed values are given in the comments section |