Overview of business object structure

In the WebSphere Business Integration system, a business object definition consists of a type name, supported verbs, and attributes. An application business object is an 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.

WebSphere Business Integration Adapter business objects can be flat or hierarchical. A flat business object contains only simple attributes, that is, attributes that represent a single value (such as a String). A hierarchical business object contains both simple attributes and child business objects or arrays of child business objects that contain the 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 type of the attribute 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 type of the attribute is the same as the type of the array of child business objects.

A hierarchical business object can have simple attributes and can also have attributes that represent either a single-cardinality child business object or an array of child business objects. In turn, each of these business objects can contain single-cardinality child business objects and arrays of business objects, and so on.

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