Passing a TABLE or TABLE-HANDLE as an INPUT parameter

When the client application passes a static temp-table (TABLE parameter) as an INPUT parameter, the client must provide an instance of the strongly typed DataTable class provided by ProxyGen. In this case, the definition of the temp-table is known at compile time, and the proxy already knows the schema (meta data) for the temp-table; therefore, the client application does not need to supply the schema, only the data. The client can add rows to the temp-table using the Rows.Add( ) method on the strongly typed DataTable class.

When the client application passes a dynamic temp-table (TABLE-HANDLE parameter) as an INPUT parameter, the proxy does not know the schema (meta data) for the temp-table. In this case, the client must provide an instance of System.Data.DataTable that contains both the schema and data for the TABLE-HANDLE parameter. The client can use the methods on the System.Data.DataTable class to add the schema and rows for the temp-table. Also, the client might need to define ABL-specific mappings for the DataTable. See Providing ABL extensions for INPUT TABLE-HANDLE parameters.

Note: It is important that the schema field order defined for the .NET DataTable match the physical order defined for the temp-table in ABL. See Providing ABL extensions for INPUT TABLE-HANDLE parameters.

Since all strongly typed DataTable classes inherit from System.Data.DataTable and contain extensions necessary to provide the ABL-specific mappings, these classes can also be passed as an INPUT TABLE-HANDLE parameter, as long as the ABL procedure is written to process the schema and data provided in the strongly typed DataTable class.