Help:Type Record

The datatype record is used for property values that consist of a short list of values of other datatypes. For each property that uses this datatype, the order and type of the individual fields of the record is fixed, based on a declaration with on the property page. Individual fields in a record value are separated with semicolons.

In earlier versions of Semantic MediaWiki, record properties have also been called many-valued properties or n-ary properties.

Declaration and usage
A record property is declared by annotating the respective property page with 2 special properties:
 * , and
 * a singleCiteRef::gh:smw:3522 annotation of  listing the record's fields separated by semicolons, where each field is the name of another property - you must not have any two fields refer to the same property.

Defining and using a record

 * Defining a record describes how record types are to be defined
 * Show examples on how to use a record
 * Contains examples on how to search a record
 * Discuses the alternative by using subobjects

Limitations

 * You cannot set the layout of the values; they will always appear as a comma-separated list.
 * Fields of records cannot be the basis for special purpose query formats such as or geography related result formats, etc.

Technical notes
A record is stored internally as subobject (given its n-ary characteristics) hereby is represented by its own entity space, yet is tightly coupled to the embedding subject. Furthermore, if a record is defined by something like  and a query contains a condition to   then the result set will match the "native" record representation (meaning the subobject not the formatted record).

With "native" record representationCiteRef::mail:sourceforge:36652046 we refer to a subobject with an anonymous identifier identifiable by  as part of the entity (subject, page) name.