III. Encoding layer

The encoding layer provides information about the encoding format of the properties such as UTF-8, ISO, etc. for the properties within the concepts.

The data format detachment feature is implemented through the encoding layer. At the machine level, information about encoding is crucial; without it, useful machine-to-machine communication is not possible. If the encoding of a property is not defined, this is inherited from the encoding defined at the concept level.

{
  "$type": "encoding",
  "$version": "1.0",
  "$schema": "A01564DBBCB04816A9BFE5FB50723EFD3BBE119E",
  "$id": "DA4B9237BACCCDF19C0760CAB7AEC4A8359010B0",
  "$author": "Andrei",
  "$description": "Encoding details for user profile schema",
  "default": "utf-8",
  "encodings": {
    "name": "utf-32",
    "address": "utf-32"
  }
}

The above depicts the general schema for the encoding layer. The data model aggregates a set of property-encoding associations and a default encoding format defined at the concept level. The default encoding will act as a fallback format for all the properties contained in the concept.

For convenience, in most of the use-cases, all properties in the concept will use the same encoding format defined at the concept level, therefore properties rarely use unusual formats. However, the model allows defining specific formats, ensuring maximum flexibility.