Data Transformation Engine Type Designer Reference Guide

Type Designer Reference Guide
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Chapter 1 - Introduction
This chapter is an overview and general discussion of the Type Designer.
Overview
The Type Designer is used to define, modify, and view type trees. A type tree
describes the syntax, structure, and semantics of your data. The syntax of data
refers to its format including tags, delimiters, terminators, and other characters
that separate or identify sections of data. The structure of data refers to its
composition including repeating sub-structures and nested groupings. The
semantics of data refer to the meaning of the data including rules for data values,
relationships among parts of a large data object, and error detection and
recovery.
Type Trees
A type tree is similar to a data dictionary because it contains a collection of type
definitions.
A data file is a simple example of data. The file consists of records and each
record consists of fields. Three kinds of data objects exist in this data file: a file,
a record, and a field. In a file of records, think of the data in terms of the three
data objects:
To define this data in the Type Designer, create a type tree. In the tree, create
three data types: file, record, and field.
Root type
Tree branch
Types