The AFD-definition Standard provides a uniform specification of AFD messages. For AFD 1.0, the generic standards XML schema and XPath are the starting point of an AFD-definition. For AFD 2.0, these are the generic standards JSON schema and JMESPath. An AFD-definition specifies three aspects:
- Data – What data need to be communicated?
- Structure – In what structure is this data included within a message?
- Validations – What checks need to be performed to generate a correct message?
The purpose of using AFD-definitions is twofold:
- Ensure that AFD specifications are consistently shareable
Generic standards with formal syntax ensure specifications are syntactically correct when applied accurately. - Ensure that AFD specifications can be processed automatically
For the generic standards used, many reliable libraries are available to automatically process the components of an AFD-definition within your own code for setting up registration, screens, validations, etc. Depending on the development environment, there is often a good choice between open source and paid libraries.
Of course, it is also possible to manually process the specifications based on an AFD-definition.
It is possible to use AFD-definitions for multiple purposes:
- (Web)services
- Data storage
- Message specifications
These purposes are described in the following paragraphs.
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