In this blog article I explain what happens with mappings for which the source is empty, and you map it to an optional or mandatory element. The scenarios described in this article are based on SOA / BPEL 11g. In some next article I will describe what happens when you do the same in SOA 12c (which is not the same).
Let's assume we have a data structure like this:
And let's assume we have a BPEL that takes a message of the above type as input, and - using a couple of different scenarios - maps it to another element of the same type as output.
The table below shows what happens when you map empty data to a mandatory or optional element (i.e. minOccurs="0"), taking payload validation into consideration, as well as making use of the "ignoreMissingFromData" and "insertMissingToData" features of XPath mappings (only available in BPEL and not in BPM). In the below "null" means that the element is not there at all, "empty" means that the element is there but has no value. As you can see from the XSD an emtpy value is nowhere allowed (otherwise it should have an attribute xsi:nill with value "true").
As you can see, disabling payload validation will lead to corrupt data. But even with payload validation on you may get a result that might not be valid in the context of usage, like an empty mandatory or optional element. Unless empty is a valid value, you should make sure that optional elements are not there when they have no value.
To set "ignoreMissingFrom" and "insertMissingToData", right-mouse click the mapping and toggle the values:
When using the "ignoreMissingFromData" feature with a null optional element mapped to itself, the result is as on the left below. When also the "insertMissingToData" feature is used, the result is as on the right:
Mind that the "insertMissingToData" feature also leads to namespace prefixes for each element.
Let's assume we have a data structure like this:
And let's assume we have a BPEL that takes a message of the above type as input, and - using a couple of different scenarios - maps it to another element of the same type as output.
The table below shows what happens when you map empty data to a mandatory or optional element (i.e. minOccurs="0"), taking payload validation into consideration, as well as making use of the "ignoreMissingFromData" and "insertMissingToData" features of XPath mappings (only available in BPEL and not in BPM). In the below "null" means that the element is not there at all, "empty" means that the element is there but has no value. As you can see from the XSD an emtpy value is nowhere allowed (otherwise it should have an attribute xsi:nill with value "true").
As you can see, disabling payload validation will lead to corrupt data. But even with payload validation on you may get a result that might not be valid in the context of usage, like an empty mandatory or optional element. Unless empty is a valid value, you should make sure that optional elements are not there when they have no value.
To set "ignoreMissingFrom" and "insertMissingToData", right-mouse click the mapping and toggle the values:
When using the "ignoreMissingFromData" feature with a null optional element mapped to itself, the result is as on the left below. When also the "insertMissingToData" feature is used, the result is as on the right:
Mind that the "insertMissingToData" feature also leads to namespace prefixes for each element.
