Release 10.1A: OpenEdge Development:
Web Services

Defining TABLE (static temp-table) parameters

TABLE parameters pass data only, because the static temp-table schema is known at WSDL generation. Progress 4GL Web services map a TABLE definition to a <complexType> consisting of a <sequence> of elements that represent a row (Progress record). Each <element> in this sequence represents a column (Progress field) of the row. For all SOAP formats, a TABLE parameter is defined as a <complexType> that references the corresponding row element <complexType>.

Client-development toolkits typically define an object for every <complexType> representing a temp-table row. The client application then creates the TABLE parameter by creating an array of temp-table row object instances.

The following examples show some <complexType> definitions for TABLE rows and parameters.

The following WSDL sample defines a TABLE row named, staticTT_ttEmpRow, with two columns, Name and Number:

TABLE parameter row schema for all SOAP formats

<complexType name="staticTT_ttEmpRow">    <sequence>       <element name="Name" nillable="true" type="xsd:string"/>       <element name="Number" nillable="true" type="xsd:int"/>    </sequence> </complexType>

The following WSDL sample defines a temp-table parameter for the ttEmp row using the RPC/Encoded SOAP format. Note that the parameter is a SOAP array of rows:

TABLE parameter for RPC/Encoded

<complexType name="ArrayOfstaticTT_ttEmpRow">    <complexContent>       <restriction base="soapenc:Array">          <attribute ref="soapenc:arrayType"             wsdl:arrayType="S2:staticTT_ttEmpRow[]"/>       </restriction>    </complexContent> </complexType>

The following WSDL sample defines a TABLE parameter using the RPC/Literal or Document/Literal SOAP formats. Note that the parameter is a sequence of multiple rows:

TABLE parameter for RPC/Literal and Document/Literal

<complexType name="staticTT_ttEmpParam">   <sequence>     <element maxOccurs="unbounded"          minOccurs="0" name="ttEmpRow" type="S2:staticTT_ttEmpRow" />   </sequence> </complexType>

For these SOAP formats, the row element name (ttEmpRow) is used to identify each element that holds a data row sent in SOAP messages that pass a TABLE parameter.

Following are general formats for TABLE parameters in SOAP messages. For an RPC/Encoded Web service, the TABLE parameter is represented as a SOAP array of TABLE rows, where each row is encapsulated by an <Item> element:

TABLE parameters—general RPC/Encoded format

<Item> <!--- row instance 1 --> </Item>       <Item> <!--- row instance 2 --> </Item>       <Item> <!--- row instance 3 --> </Item>       ...

In RPC/Encoded SOAP messages passing TABLE parameters, you might notice XML like this:

<Item href="#id2"/>       ...       <...id="id2">         <!--- row instance 1 -->         <!--- row instance 2 -->         <!--- row instance 3 -->         ...       </...>

Some client toolkits use the SOAP encoding href attribute to reference the data in a SOAP array for a given row instance at a different location in the message (indicated by the id attribute with the corresponding value). The WSA, however, does not use this indirect form of data reference for TABLE parameters in RPC/Encoded SOAP messages.

For an RPC/Literal or Document/Literal Web service, the TABLE parameter is represented as a <sequence> of TABLE row elements. Each element is named after the row <element> in the <complexType> used to define the TABLE row for the parameter. This WSDL-named row <element> corresponds to the <Item> element used to represent SOAP array rows in RPC/Encoded Web services.

Thus, using the sample row element named ttEmpRow, a SOAP message contains a TABLE parameter for this row definition in the following form:

TABLE parameters—general Document (or RPC)/Literal format

<ttEmpRow> <!-- row instance 1 --> </ttEmpRow>       <ttEmpRow> <!-- row instance 2 --> </ttEmpRow>       <ttEmpRow> <!-- row instance 3 --> </ttEmpRow>       ...

Each column of a TABLE row can hold any data type shown in Table 4–3.

Table 4–3: XML data types for TABLE (static temp-table) parameter columns 

Progress 4GL data type	XML Schema data type
BLOB1	xsd:base64Binary
CHARACTER	xsd:string
CLOB1	xsd:string
COM-HANDLE	xsd:long
DATE	xsd:date
DATETIME	xsd:dateTime
DATETIME-TZ	xsd:dateTime
DECIMAL	xsd:decimal
INTEGER (32 bit)	xsd:int
LOGICAL	xsd:boolean
RAW	xsd:base64Binary
RECID (32 or 64 bit)	xsd:long
ROWID	xsd:base64Binary
WIDGET-HANDLE	xsd:long

1BLOB and CLOB data types are designed to support very large objects. Use of these data types for table fields in Web services can result in a serious performance impact.