Data and Schema

Every data-instance in the Morphir data-model is a subtype of the Morphir Data interface. The instances contain their corresponding data as well as a Data.shape property that represents the schema of the data. For example, for the following simple record type:

case class Person(name: String, age: Int)

An instance of this record would have the following Morphir data-model encoding.

// Instance
val joe = Person("Joe", 123)

// Encoding
Data.Record(
    values = List(
        Label("name") -> Data.String("Joe"),
        Label("age") -> Data.Int32(123)
    )
)

Note that the equivalent representation of this data in ELM is the following:

person: { name: String, age: Int }
person = { name = "Joe", age = 123 }

Every single instance of the data-model has a Data.shape property that represents the schema. The schema of this record will look like the following:

Concept.Record(
    values = List(
        Label("name") -> Concept.String
        Label("age") -> Concept.Int
    )
)

With this in mind, complete data available on the Data.Record instance above can be thought of as the following. (NOTE: the shorthand L("name") will be used for Label("name") now on).

// val joe = Person("Joe", 123)
Data.Record(
  values = List(
    L("name") -> Data.String("Joe"),
    L("age") -> Data.Int32(123)
  )
  shape = Concept.Record(
    values = List(
      L("name") -> Concept.String
      L("age") -> Concept.Int32
    )
  )
)

Notice how the general shape of the Data.Record.shape.values information corresponds to the shape of the Data.Record. values information. This is a general idea that the Morphir data-model attempts to maintain. The Concept data within the Data.shape of various Data instances should approximately mirror what is available on the value level.

Also please note that from now on, the variadic constructor shorthand for Data.Record and Concept.Record will be used:

Data.Record(
    L("name") -> Data.String("Joe"), L("age") -> Data.Int(123))
    shape =
      Concept.Record(L("name") -> Concept.String, L("age") -> Concept.Int)
)

This relationship between Data and Concept is maintained down to the primitive level. For example, Data.string is represented as the following:

Data.String(
    value = "Joe",
    shape = Concept.String
)

In the case of primitives, the Data.shape field represents a leaf-level Concept element.