Overview of business object structure

In the WebSphere business integration system, a business object definition consists of:

An application-specific business object is a particular instance of a business object definition. It reflects a specific application's data structure and attribute properties.

Some attributes, instead of containing data, point to child business objects or arrays of child business objects that contain the data for these objects. Keys relate the data between the parent record and child records.

Business objects for adapters can be flat or hierarchical. A flat business object only contains simple attributes, that is, attributes that represent a single value (such as a string) and do not point to child business objects. A hierarchical business object contains both simple attributes and child business objects or arrays of child business objects that contain attribute values.

A cardinality 1 container object, or single-cardinality relationship, occurs when an attribute in a parent business object contains a single child business object. In this case, the child business object represents a collection that can contain only one record. The attribute type is the same as that of the child business object.

A cardinality n container object, or multiple-cardinality relationship, occurs when an attribute in the parent business object contains an array of child business objects. In this case, the child business object represents a collection that can contain multiple records. The attribute type is the same as that of the array of child business objects.

Copyright IBM Corp. 1997, 2004