Business object attribute properties

Business object architecture defines various properties that apply to attributes. This section describes how the connector interprets several of these properties and describes how to set them.

Name property

Each business object attribute must have a unique name.

Type property

Each business object attribute must have a type, such as Integer, String or the type of a child business object.

Cardinality property

Each business object attribute that represents a child or array of child business objects has the value of 1 or n, respectively, in this attribute. All attributes that represent child business objects also have a ContainedObjectVersion property (which specifies the child's version number) and a Relationship property (which specifies the value Containment).

Key property

At least one simple attribute of each business object must be specified as the key. To do so, set this property to true.

Note:
The connector does not support specifying an attribute that represents a child business object or an array of child business objects as a key attribute.

The connector uses each key attribute to uniquely identify or create an instance of a Component Interface. For information about causing the application to generate a unique ID, see Create operations and Update operations.

Required property

The Required property specifies whether a simple attribute or an attribute that represents a single-cardinality child business object must contain a value.

If this property is specified for an attribute that represents a single-cardinality child business object, the connector requires the parent business object to contain a child business object for this attribute.

When the connector receives a business object with a Create request, the connector causes the Create operation to fail if a required attribute does not have a valid value.

When the connector receives a business object with a Retrieve request and the business object does not have a valid value or a default value for a required attribute, the connector causes the retrieval operation to fail.

The connector does not use this property for attributes that represent an array of child business objects.

Max length property

If the attribute is of type String, this property specifies the maximum length allowed for the attribute's value.

AppSpecificInfo

For information on this property, see Application-specific information at the attribute level.

Default value property

This property specifies a default value that the connector uses to populate a simple field if the attribute does not contain a value. The connector does not evaluate this property for attributes that represent child business objects. For a create operation, the connector uses the value of this property.

The connector sends the value of this property to the application to use in identifier-generation if the following is true:

For information about causing the application to generate a unique ID, see Create operations and Update operations.

Special attribute value

Simple attributes in business object can have a special value: CxIgnore. When the connector receives a request business object, the connector ignores all attributes with a value of CxIgnore. It is as if those attributes were invisible to the connector.

When the connector retrieves data from a Component Interface with a field that contains a null value, the connector sets the value of its corresponding attribute to CxIgnore by default.

Because the connector requires at least one key attribute to create a business object, the business process that creates the business object should ensure that business objects passed to the connector have at least one key that is not set to CxIgnore. The only exception to this requirement is a business object whose key is to be generated by the connector.

Copyright IBM Corp. 1997, 2004