Custom data conversion and sorting allows most aspects of the management of data in the presentation layer of Cúram applications to be customized. Customizations can control how data is formatted, parsed, validated and sorted; error reporting can also be customized and controlled. Operations are performed on data values according to a well-defined data life-cycle and, at each stage, the operations can be customized. To understand how, when, and where to customize the operations, you must first understand the operations available and how they fit into the life-cycle.
This chapter describes the supported mechanisms for the customization of data conversion and comparison operations. For completeness, and to aid understanding, some operations are described, but the corresponding customization mechanisms are not documented, as customization of these operations is not supported (or not supported using the programmatic mechanisms described here).
The descriptions of the Java interfaces and classes presented here may be incomplete, as unsupported methods may be omitted from their descriptions for clarity. However, the JavaDoc documentation for these interfaces and classes may include more information and describe more comprehensive customization mechanisms, but only the mechanisms described here are supported.