Data Object

A data object represents a data structure, so its specification basically includes just a listing of data attributes and their types, which are automatically generated from Enterprise Architect:

Unlike domain objects, which have meaning as they represent real-world objects, data objects are just "data containers" passed to a service or function as an argument. Therefore, data objects do not require any meaningful description, so it can be omitted.

Complex Data Structures

The example above presents a simple data object consisting only of attributes of primitive types (String, Integer, Boolean, etc.). However, inputs and outputs can be complex structures composed of multiple nested data objects. For example, the following data object includes a nested data object Employment and a collection of Payment data objects:

There are two different ways to present such complex data structures. The first approach expands all child objects into a flat structure and describes them in one place:

The downside is duplication if the data object is included in the parent object multiple times.

Another alternative is to describe the nested data objects separately. This ensures that the child objects are always documented only once, but it requires the reader to manually look up the specification of the nested objects:

The last option is to use a simplified plain-text representation: