The purpose of this entity is to identify and describe the information that is used in the COBOL code of the company applications. A Data can be viewed in the Pacbase facet as a Data Element. However, the formats that are indicated in the Pacbase facet are not recognized in the COBOL facet.
The information that is represented by a Data is considered as elementary during at least one stage in the development of a project. For example, the information "Date of operation" can be broken down into year, month, and day of operation. Each of these basic units of information is defined as a Data.
A Data is defined by its name and its COBOL name.
The instances of this entity are not automatically processed by Rational® Programming Patterns. You must use them through user micropatterns that you must create. However, Rational Programming Patterns offers a guided input for these instances.