Concept help - Data Type

A datatype is a set of distinct values, characterized by properties of those values and by operations on those values (ISO/IEC 11404).

Primative datatypes are those "that cannot be decomposed into other datatypes without loss of associated semantics "

ISO/IEC 11179-3 Section 11.3.2.9

Datatype is a class, each instance of which models a datatype (3.1.9), a set of distinct values, characterized by properties of those values and by operations on those values. For example, the category used for the collection of letters, digits, and/or symbols to depict values of a Data_Element (11.5.2.1) determined by the operations that may be performed on the Data_Element.

This part of ISO/IEC 11179 is intended to accommodate datatypes from datatype schemes specified in external standards. It is also intended to accommodate other non-standard datatype schemes. Possible standardized datatype schemes include:

• ISO/IEC 9075 (SQL dataype);
• ISO/IEC 11404 (General Purpose Datatypes);
• ISO 21090 Health Informatics datatypes;
• C programming language datatypes;
• XML Schema datatypes;