The Different Data Types

This page explains the purpose of the different data types that can be created in the typeregistry.

Schema Elements

One main application of the Data Type Registry is the creation of metadata elements of schemas. Registering metadata elements has many advantages. These include the unambigious identification via a PID, additional metadata information, and the possibility of reusability and interoperability of types.

Basic Info Types

BasicInfoTypes can be considered the basic building blocks, or leaf nodes, for schema elements. Each BasicInfoType is simply some fundamental data type, with additional metadata and the possibility to apply some restrictions on that type.

BasicInfoType
String
Number
Boolean
Enum

Info Types

An InfoType on the other hand is a more complex construct. It shares the set of metadata with BasicInfoTypes, but instead of a fundamental data type it represents a composite of other types. It can either take the form of an Object, which is basically a is a collection of BasicInfoTypes and InfoTypes that are used to create a new InfoType, or an Array, where one type can be repeated. The Tuple property will be implemented soon.

InfoType
Object
Array
Tuple

Profiles

Syntactically, a Profile is similar to an InfoType, but it differs semantically. A Profile can only be an object and represents a full schema or kernel information profile (KIP).

Taxonomy Nodes

Taxonomy Nodes can be used to group types together in a way that is more semantically meaningful. Each Taxonomy Node represents just a term with potential parent nodes. This way, Taxonomy Nodes can be hierarchically organized. Each other kind of data type can be assigned one or more taxonomy nodes, which can used as custom facets either in the query builder or in the Type API, where the hierarchical nature of the taxonomy nodes can be used to filter results.

Measurement Units

The DTR offers rudimentary support for measurement units. They can be registered with minimal information assigned to BasicInfoTypes. The DTR is not supposed to be a ground truth registry for measurement units, but they serve to enrich other types with more semantic information.

Extended MIME Types

In a proof of concept, the DTR includes the ability to register extended MIME types. The entire collection of Media Types from IANA is included in the DTR in machine actionable format and with additional metadata enriched.