Business object attribute properties

Business object architecture defines various properties that apply to attributes. This section describes how the connector interprets these properties and describes how to set them when modifying a business object.

Name property

Each business object attribute must have a unique name.

Type property

Each business object attribute must be of type String, or the type of a child business object or an array of child business objects.

Cardinality property

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

Max length property

The connector does not use this property. Although Advanced Outbound Wizard populates this property when it generates the business object, it does so only to provide information.

Key property

At least one simple attribute in each business object must be specified as the key. To define an attribute as a key, set this property to true.

Important:
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.

If the key property is set to true for a simple attribute, the connector adds that attribute to the WHERE clause of the SELECT SQL statement that it generates while processing the business object.

To maximize performance, it is recommended that you provide data for as many key fields as possible.

To retrieve a child business object or children from an array of business objects, the connector uses foreign keys in the WHERE clause of the SELECT statement. It does not use the Key property of attributes in child business objects. For information on how to specify an attribute in a child business object as a foreign key, see Application-Specific information for simple attributes.

Foreign key property

The connector does not use this property. The connector obtains foreign-key information from application-specific information. For more information, see Application-Specific information for simple attributes.

Required property

The Required property specifies whether an attribute must contain a value.

AppSpecificInfo

For information on this property, see Application-Specific information for simple attributes.

Default value property

This property specifies a default value that the connector uses when generating the WHERE clause of a SELECT statement. This property is relevant only to simple attributes that have been specified as key. For example, to cause the connector to use the default value specified for the Language attribute, you must specify the Language attribute as key.

Special value for simple attributes

Simple attributes in business objects can have the special value, CxIgnore. When it receives a business object from the integration broker, 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 the database and the SELECT statement returns a blank value for an attribute, the connector sets the value of that attribute to CxBlank by default.

Because the connector requires every business object to have at least one key attribute, make sure that business objects passed to the connector have at least one primary or foreign key that is not set to CxIgnore.

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