Guidelines for changing the schema item settings from their default values (Flash Professional only)

The following guidelines specify when to change the schema item settings from their default values:

• You always need a kind. However, if you leave Kind = "none", it is the same as saying Data, which is usually the preferred setting.
• You need an encoder when the component does not provide the data in the form you want. The most common case is the XMLConnector component, or any other component whose properties are XML data. This is because XML stores all data—including numbers, dates, and Boolean values—as strings. So if you want to use the actual data (the number, Boolean value, or date) instead of the string representation of the data, you use an encoder.
• You need a formatter when you want to control how the data is converted to a string, usually for display purposes.
• You need a data type when you want data validation to occur, you want better conversion for certain data types, or both.