7.18 Aiding human readability

Messages created in accordance with the CDM standard are designed so that they can be ingested and processed automatically. However, when establishing a new message exchange it may be helpful for humans to be able read a CDM message. The same may be true for error handling during normal operations.

It is therefore recommended, for each Record type used in a CDM message created in accordance with the CDM standard, to include above the first actual Record data an additional Record that sets out, once, all the Cell “headings” for that particular Record.

The first Cell of the “headings” Record shall be populated with the relevant Record identifier, preceded by a hash symbol (“#”) in accordance with Clause 7.7 and as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2 – Human readable layout of a CDM message created in accordance with the CDM standard

Figure 2 shows a CDM message created in accordance with the CDM standard loaded into a spreadsheet application, with some rows coloured to aid readability.

When creating such “headings” Records, the sender should ensure that it uses (i) the correct Record identifier for the profile version used (specifically, the correct version of the Record identifier) and (ii) the correct Cell names. While failing to do this will not cause automated ingestion of the CDM message to fail as these lines are ignored during ingestion, they might lead to recipients questioning whether the remainder of the CDM message is following the standard correctly.