About Data Types

A data type tells a filter / transformer how to parse a certain format. The inbound data type serializes the incoming raw data into its internal representation. Then the filter / transformer executes, possibly modifying this internal representation, or even completely overwriting it with a different internal representation. Finally, the outbound data type takes this transformed data and deserializes it into the proper outbound format (the encoded data) .

For example, the HL7 v2.x data type serializes ER7 data from this:

into this:

In this case, the internal representation is XML, because, for HL7 v2.x, the message object you use or manipulate in a filter / transformer is an E4X XML object. However not all data types use XML for their internal representation. The JSON data type uses JSON as you might expect, and the object you use in a filter / transformer is a regular JavaScript Object. The Raw data type does no serialization or deserialization, so its internal representation is identical to the inbound message, and the object used in the filter / transformer is a Java String.

For additional information, see Data Types. Mirth® Connect supports the following data types:

• Delimited Text Data Type
• DICOM Data Type
• EDI / X12 Data Type
• HL7 v2.x Data Type
• HL7 v3.x Data Type
• JSON Data Type
• NCPDP Data Type
• Raw Data Type
• XML Data Type
• Batch Processing
• JavaScript Batch Script