Converting business objects to delimited data

To convert a business object to a string, the Delimited data handler loops through the attributes of a business object in sequential order. It generates Delimited formatting recursively in the order in which attributes appear in the business object and its children. The name of the business object is passed as an argument to the conversion method.

The Delimited data handler processes business objects into delimited data as follows:

  1. The data handler creates a string to contain the data in the business object.
  2. The data handler adds the business object name as the first token in the string and adds the verb as the second a token in the string.
  3. The data handler examines the application-specific information in the business object definition to determine if there are any child meta-objects (those whose names are listed in the cw_mo_ tag of the business object application-specific information). The data handler does not include these attributes in the delimited data.
  4. The data handler looks for the meta-object attribute named OmitObjectEventId. If this is set to true, the data handler does not include ObjectEventId data of the business object in the delimited data.
  5. The data handler loops through the remaining business object attributes in order, adding values for each simple attribute to the string and adding the configured delimiter after each attribute. For container attributes, the data handler does the following:
  6. When the data handler completes the conversion, it returns the serialized data to the caller. The data handler returns the data in the form (String or InputStream) requested by the caller.

The format that the data handler generates conforms to the following pattern:

Bus_Obj_Name<delimiter>Verb<delimiter>Attr1<delimiter>Attr2<delimiter>
   Number_of_child_object_instances<delimiter>Child_Object_Name<delimiter>Verb
   <delimiter>Attr1<delimiter>Attr2<EndBO:Bus_Obj_Name>
   

An escape string is appended in front of any delimiter-like string in an attribute value. The escape string is configured using the Escape attribute of the child meta-object.

Copyright IBM Corp. 1997, 2003