Following Hope Wright, the DGSD records 45 attribute types. They include information about the administrative subdivisions of counties; the existence of markets, resources, and manufacturing works, and information about rank, demography, and geography. An entity may be associated with any number of attributes, and many attributes have associated numerical data. The attribute types are:
| Administrative subdivisions | has xiang 鄉, has zhen鎮, has li裏, has wu務, has pu鋪, has fang坊, has dong洞, has bao 堡, has zhai 寨, has cheng 城, has jimizhou 羈縻州 |
| Markets, resources, and manufacturing | has iron market, has silver market, has tea market, has salt market, has lead market, has gold market, has aluminum market, has tin market, has copper market, has salt storage, has salt wells, has iron works, has copper coin work, has coin works, has iron coin works, has mercury works, has silver works, has silver, has horses, has cattle |
| Rank | has civil rank, has military rank |
| Demographic Information | has hu戶, has kou 口, has ding丁, has zhu 住, has ke 客, Chinese household, non-Chinese household |
| Geographical Information | has point location, has poly location, alternative civil name, alternative military name, metropolitan |