Term Definition: Information Type
Main Description

A black-box representation of a persisted data structure that is not exposed using services.  The internals of the data structure are not revealed.  An artifact such as a database table is considered to be part of the internal design of a service provider and therefore not something that you would want to expose in its specification. Actual data persistence structures might change in shape (possibly for non-functional reasons such as performance) without affecting clients of the specification.

Information types are very useful in service operation pre-condition and post-condition specifications as they provide a mechanism to refer to changes in state in a black-box fashion.

Information types commonly are derived from domain types.