Issue - 155 - Proposal For Vote

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

Issue 155 - ComplexType Support in BPEL

Proposal: Allow the type attributes on variable declarations to point to 
complex as well as simple types.

Rationale: WSDL message parts can be defined using complex types, in the 
case of WS-I RPC/literal it is actually required that WSDL message parts 
be defined using a type, either simple or complex. But currently doing 
something as simple as copying a part defined using a complex type into 
a variable is difficult because variables are not allowed to be complex 
types. Also, having complex type based variables allows code to be 
reused more effectively when dealing with data with the same complex 
type but different element names. (e.g. A same piece of code can deal 
with data of element "shipTo" and element "billTo" of the same "address" 
complex type.)

Changes Required: Mostly removing the limitation that type can only 
specify a simple type and specifying that the infoset for a complexType 
is a document information item that contains a wildcard document element 
(e.g. it can be anything) that then contains the actual complex type value.

Section 6.1:

Current:The <variables> section defines the data variables used by the 
process, providing their definitions in terms of WSDL message types, XML 
Schema simple types, or XML Schema elements.

Replacement:The <variables> section defines the data variables used by 
the process, providing their definitions in terms of WSDL message types, 
XML Schema types (simple or complex) or XML Schema elements.

Section 9.2:

Current: The type of each variable may be a WSDL message type, an XML 
Schema simple type or an XML Schema element.

Replacement: The type of each variable may be a WSDL message type, an 
XML Schema type (simple or complex) or an XML Schema element.

Current: Attribute type refers to an XML Schema simple type.

Replacement: Attribute type refers to an XML Schema type (simple or 
complex).

Delete: An XML Schema complex type must be associated with an element to 
be used by a BPEL4WS variable.

Insert after the paragraph which begins "The messageType, type or 
element attributes...": The infoset for a complexType variable consists 
of a document information item that contains exactly one child, an 
element information item which is pointed at by the document element 
property. The properties of the document element, specifically the 
namespace name and local name properties, are undefined by this 
specification, as such an implementation MUST specify whatever legal 
property values it likes. However the children of the document element 
MUST exclusively consist of the complexType values assigned to the 
variable."

Section 9.3:

Current:  When the variable is defined using XML Schema simple type or 
element, the part attribute MUST NOT be used.

Replacement:  When the variable is defined using XML Schema types 
(simple or complex) or element, the part attribute MUST NOT be used.

Section 14.1:

Current: When only the first argument is present, the function extracts 
the value of the variable, which in this case must be defined using an 
XML Schema simple type or element.

Replacement: When only the first argument is present, the function 
extracts the value of the variable, which in this case must be defined 
using an XML Schema type (simple or complex) or element. Note that in 
the case of a complexType variable the document element's name cannot be 
generally known at design time. Therefore to refer to the contents of a 
complexType variable one would use an XPATH 1.0 expression of the form 
"/*/..."