Introduction

This document describes the interface (data types and formats) that modules need to adhere to when they are to work within the DELFT-FEWS system, together these form the DELFT-FEWS published interface. This document describes the recognised file types.

All data exchange is done by means of Extended Markup Language (XML) files. XML is a markup language used to describe the structure of data in a meaningful way. XML is widely used and as it is an open standard many free (and commercial) tools exists to create XML documents.
XML Schemas are used to describe the contents of XML documents. An XML schema (see http://www.w3.org/XML/Schema for more information) is available for each file type. The exception in the interface published here being gridded data that is stored in separate (binary or ASCII) files and (optionally) ASCII based time series that can be used by the general model adapter.
Although the description of the file formats can be extracted from the XML schema files, Appendix E includes a tabular description of all the Schema (XSD) files. In addition, XML sample documents are provided for all file formats. However, if the schema documentation is not complete (or clear), the actual schema (XSD) files should be consulted. To keep the document to a manageable size, these files have not been printed and included in the documentation. The files are available in digital format.