Formats

FMR supports a range of transmission formats for structural metadata, data and referential metadata. This page introduces the main options and helps you decide which format is appropriate for a particular exchange.

For structural metadata, FMR supports the official SDMX structure formats: SDMX-ML Structure, SDMX-JSON Structure, and SDMX-EDI Structure. These cover the standard SDMX artefacts and provide a choice between XML, JSON, and EDIFACT-based representations. SDMX-ML Structure is the closest to the SDMX Information Model and is often preferred where schema-driven XML exchange is required. SDMX-JSON Structure provides the official JSON alternative for structural metadata, while SDMX-EDI Structure remains available for established workflows that still depend on the older EDIFACT syntax.

FMR also supports Fusion-JSON for structural metadata. Fusion-JSON is a Fusion-specific format and is the only structure format capable of serialising all structures supported by FMR, including non-SDMX standard objects. This is particularly important for Publication Tables, Reporting Templates, and Validation Schemes, which cannot be fully represented in the official SDMX structure formats. Where an implementation needs to exchange both standard SDMX artefacts and FMR-specific structures, Fusion-JSON is the format to use.

For data transmission, FMR supports several official SDMX data formats, each suited to different integration styles. SDMX-ML Generic Data uses a consistent XML structure across datasets, which makes it predictable across different Data Structure Definitions. SDMX-ML Structure Specific Data derives its XML elements and attributes from the Data Structure Definition, producing more compact messages and enabling schema validation. SDMX-JSON Data is well suited to web and application use cases, SDMX-CSV Data is useful for tabular exchange and spreadsheet-oriented workflows, and SDMX-EDI Data remains available for legacy integrations that still require it.

Excel is also supported for structural metadata and data. Excel serialisation is not part of the SDMX standard layout.

Note

When working with Excel, FMR requires the spreadsheets to be layed out in a specific way. It cannot extract data and structures from arbitrarily arranged worksheets.