Re: [wsbpel] Issue - 138 - Properties of type element

["Yaron Y. Goland" <ygoland@bea.com>]

One of the things I really enjoy about working on software platforms is 
to see how users use features we have provided in ways we never 
expected. We had just such an experience with properties.

It turns out that properties are an extraordinarily useful way of 
allowing process architects to enable process programmers to interact 
with complex XML structures in simple ways. Rather than forcing process 
programmers to liter their BPELs with XPATHs the process architect can 
define the key XPATHs for the structures the programmers need to 
interact with and provide them as properties. The results have been most 
gratifying.

To further enable such scenarios it would be very useful to expand 
properties to support arbitrary types. This change would require no 
alterations what so ever in our correlation mechanism.

This is one of the great situations where everyone wins. Correlation 
still work just fine and users have access to a fantastic feature that 
allows them to be more productive. I personally expect to see properties 
become the preferred way to abstracting data structures for programmers. 
It will become a core design pattern for BPEL.

		Yaron

Satish Thatte wrote:
> 
> 
> This proposal represents a completely new interpretation of properties.  
> Properties are not general queries against data in XML messages.  We 
> already have a general query mechanism embedded independently of 
> properties.  Properties were specifically introduced for correlation and 
> the restriction to simple types is appropriate for that primary use case.
> 
>  
> 
> Satish
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> * From: * ws-bpel issues list editor [mailto:peter.furniss@choreology.com]
> *Sent:* Wednesday, July 14, 2004 8:01 PM
> *To:* wsbpel@lists.oasis-open.org
> *Subject:* [wsbpel] Issue - 138 - Properties of type element
> 
>  
> 
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> 
>     * Issue - 138 - Properties of type element *
> 
> * Status: * open
> *Categories:* Syntax and validation <#category_syntax_and_validation>
> *Date added:* 15 Jul 2004
> *Submitter:* Yaron Y. Goland <mailto:ygoland@bea.com>
> *Date submitted:* 15 July 2004
> *Description:* Properties are currently restricted to be simpleTypes but 
> in many cases being able to pull out structured information is 
> extraordinarily valuable to users. One can imagine properties like 'list 
> or order addresses' that goes through all the orders in a PO and returns 
> a list of all the address structures.
> *Submitter's proposal:* We should allow properties to be both 
> simpleTypes and complexTypes.
> *Changes:* 15 Jul 2004 - new issue
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