The schema dictates a fixed set of information about business objects, business object relations and business object values (enumerators) that will be exported or imported. It is used as a base for creating the XML files. The schema identifies three types of categories:
An enumerator is a predefined value that the property of the business object can apply in certain circumstances. For example: The business object Object consists of the property Operational Status which can inherit any of the following values: Planned for Operation, In Operation, Out of Operation, Scrapped. The enumerator ObjectOperationalStatus directs the business object to inherit a suitable operational status value and a description for that value.
In this category, business objects are listed together with the fundamental properties they should consist of. The properties listed for a particular business object are visible together with information regarding those properties. For example: The business object Object is defined with the following properties:
| Name | Type | Length | Key | Nillable | Actual Type | IsArray | IsReadOnly |
| Plant | Plant | 0 | True | False | False | False | |
| Class | string | 40 | False | False | Class | False | False |
Where Name is the name of the property of the business object.
Type is the type of the property as defined in the XML file. The type Plant
refers to the business object
Plant.
Length is the length of the the property value.
Key is a value which is used to uniquely identify the particular business
object. If the property uniquely identifies the business object this field will
adopt the value True and if not, the value False will appear.
Nillable is either True or False depending on whether the property has to have a
value or not.
Actual Type is the type of the property as can be seen in the database schema.
IsArray is either True or False depending on whether the property has a
collection of values or a single value.
IsReadOnly is either True or False depending on whether the property is a
read-only value in the XML file.
Business object relations define the relationships between two business objects using relation points. This can be between the same type of business object or two different types of business objects. For example, the business object relation ClassParent has its relation points defined as follows:
| Name | Type | Cardinality | Role Label |
| Source | Class | 1 | is a sub class of |
| Target | Class | unbound | is a super class to |
Where: Name is the name of the relation type. This is of two types:
Source
and Target where source refers to a particular business object and target to the
business object it is related to.
Type is the type of the business object.
Cardinality shows the ratio of the relationship between the business objects. In
the example above, the cardinality value lets you know that the class (source)
can have only one parent class (target) while the parent class can have many
classes (children).
Role Label is the part played by the business object in the relationship.