generic attribute

Generic attributes are considered as attributes within a structure that may have different representations. Generic attributes do have a complex data type (structure), which contains at least the attribute type (enumerated value) and the attribute value(s). Typical case for an attribute type is language, which allows displaying a generic attribute in a number of languages. By selecting an attribute type for a generic attribute, attributes will appear according to the selected presentation type (e.g. language).

Generic attributes can be used in keys for defining generic indexes.