Description: The technical format of the variable in question. Attributes for this element include: "type," which indicates if the variable is character or numeric; "formatname," which in some cases may provide the name of the particular, proprietary format actually used; "schema," which identifies the vendor or standards body that defined the format (acceptable choices are SAS, SPSS, IBM, ANSI, ISO, XML-data or other); "category," which describes what kind of data the format represents, and includes date, time, currency, or "other" conceptual possibilities; and "URI," which supplies a network identifier for the format definition.
Example(s):
<var><varFormat type="numeric" schema="SAS" formatname="DATE" category="date" >The number in this
variable is stored in the form 'ddmmmyy' in SAS format. </varFormat></var>
<var><varFormat type="numeric" formatname="date.iso8601" schema="XML-Data" category="date"
URI="http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/NOTE-XML-data/">19541022 </varFormat></var>