An event type definition contains important information about a particular event type, including the event's fields and their data type. Both the Broker and the webMethods Broker library functions use event type definitions to verify that an event's fields are set with the correct data types. The event type definitions are also used if you call the awValidateEvent function to validate an event that your application might have received or created.

Several functions are provided to enable your Broker client to obtain event type definitions. Once you have obtained an event type definition, you can obtain information on all of the event's fields and their associated data types. Your Broker client may need to obtain event type information to be able to dynamically handle event types whose format has changed since the client application was compiled.