Reading information type description

Introduction

For the IS types which have been defined using the procedure described in Chapter 3, an application can get the type description at run-time. The type description includes the name of the type and the text explaining this type (if this text has been provided by the type creator). In addition it is possible to get a number of the type's attributes and also type and textual description for each of them. This type meta-information can be used by a user interface application to display information description along with the information value, allowing user to understand the meaning of the IS information. Such application can be programmed so that it will not require reprogramming and recompilation when a new information types appear.

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The applications which are using the IS type meta-information API must be linked with the libisdoc and librdb libraries. The libisdoc library is part of the IS itself, while the librdb is library implemented by the Remote Database (RDB)[11] component of the Online Software.

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