Structure

The ISF defines a logical model that is used to define a canonical representation of the data that is related to a business transaction. This model is provided as an XML schema that defines the structure and semantics of that content, and an associated physical representation as an XML document.

Each business transaction is associated with a separate ISF transaction document that captures the business data that is related to that transaction. Each transaction has an associated business purpose. The business purpose of a transaction is recorded in the following places.
  • The ISF transaction document. For more information, see Transaction document.
  • The database entry used to store the transaction. The documentation for the FTM data model for this version is provided in the entitled documentation fix pack for FTM. For more information about getting the fix pack, see FTM support links.
The business purpose of the transaction dictates the structure and content of the business data in the ISF transaction document. For example, for payment transactions, different business purposes can distinguish between the following things.
  • Outgoing credit transfer payments that were received from a client.
  • Outgoing credit transfer payments to be sent to a clearing system.
  • Incoming credit transfer payments that are received from a clearing system.
The description of the FTM sample application contains more examples of how a set of business purposes can be identified for a use case.

The data model is built on a set of well-typed data structures. These data structures are based on the business components and data types that are defined in the data dictionary of the ISO20022 repository. Each business component is represented as a complex type with its child elements arranged alphabetically. These child elements provide the main building blocks to define the business data content of transactions. Each data type is represented as a simple type in the ISF XML schema.

If the definition of a business component in the ISO20022 data dictionary is based on another business component, the complex type definition uses the XML schema derived by extension construct to reflect this situation. For more information about this construct, see Use of derived types. For example,
  • Person and Organization extend Party.
  • FinancialInstitution extends Organization.
  • CashAccount extends Account.

Further constructs define the overall structure of the ISF XML document, the structures that define the content for different transactions, and other ISF content. Each of these constructs is defined within separate schema files that together define the ISF schema.

A complete ISF schema is made up of the following files:
  • Core schema files that define common structures.
  • Extension schema files that add support for a specific application area (such as payments or securities) or a specific solution (such as SEPA credit transfer or international payments).

The following sections describe how these schema files are organized, how to add extensions to the ISF for different application areas or specific solutions, and some of the standard extensions that are already built.