Character set

UTF-8

Allowed character set

Alphanumeric characters:

A-Z, a-z, 0-9

Umlauts:

ÄäÜüÖöß

Special characters:

!"#$%&'()*+,-./:<=>?@^_`§

Spaces

Allowed number of characters and formatting for

optional article texts:

(Article short description, article description,

marketing text, usage note)

U0020 – U007F Latin Basic without control characters

U00A0 – U00FF Latin-1 Supplement without control characters

U0100 – U017F Latin Extended-A

U0370 – U03FF Greek, Coptic

U0400 – U04FF Cyrillic

U000A Line feed

U000D Line feed

U2200 - U22FF Mathematical characters

U2300 Diameter characters

Formatting:

Paragraph, Line Break <p>, <br> 

Bold, Italic, Underlined <b>, <strong>, <i>, <u>

Ordered and Unordered List <ol>, <ul>, <li>

Font Sizes (Headline) <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, <h4> 

Line separator

CR LF (0D 0A)

Field separator

Semicolon ( ; )

Text isolation character/masking character

quotation marks ( " )

Decimal separator

Comma (,)

Thousands separator

Not used

Date format

DDMMYYYYY (31122012)

(valid range: 01011900-31122099)

Logical content

„true" / „false"

GTIN (EAN)

13 or 14 digits Numeric with valid check digit

Code lists

See individual chapters

Headerline

Each file must contain a header line

Quality category

Rating

1

Quality category 1 - technically required

These contents are necessary solely from a technical perspective to process a master data record (e.g., article number).

1*

Quality category 1* - technically required when utilized

Those content comprises various detailed pieces of information. Starting with the first detail information may necessitate additional details. For example, a price entry consists of the actual value, i.e., the price, as well as the additional necessary information such as price type, currency, price basis, and price unit.

2

Quality category 2 - mandatory quality criterion

These are contents that, from a purely technical perspective, are not mandatory, such as an article number, but are indeed mandatory from a content perspective. For example, in cross-border trade, the commodity code is required for customs and Intrastat reporting.

3

Quality category 3 - conditional mandatory quality criterion

A condition such as a product characteristic leads to the need for certain additional information. The property that a product is a dangerous good means that additional information such as the UN number, the hazard class or the transport category must be provided. Another condition for the mandatory provision of data content is the use in publications, e.g. print media or the Internet, if these are publicly accessible documents.

4

Quality category 4 - supplementary quality criterion for good data quality

By providing information such as the definition of accessory lists for an article, a service can be delivered to our own customers. This is a content with which a quality standard for the data is met, thus achieving a quality criterion.

5

Quality category 5 - optional

The data additionally includes content that further enhances the quality, such as URLs to additional item information or documents like assembly or maintenance manuals.