The component supports the CORBA Any type. The Any objects are mapped as xs:anyType, for example if we have a CORBA method declared in the IDL as:
string echo(in any msg)
The parameter is converted in:
<xs:element minOccurs="0" name="msg" type="xs:anyType"/>
We can put into Anys only types that are defined in the IDL used to generate the WSDL (or defined in imported IDLs). The XML messages managed by the component must specify, in XML elements that represents Any objects, the xsi:type. For example:
<arg0 xsi:type="ser:echo1">
<name>Marco</name>
<address>Imola</address>
</arg0>
We can create the WSDL form an IDL containing an Any as usual using with the Netbeans Plugin:
Now we can use this WSDL in a BPEL. If we need to invoke an operation that uses a Any we have to assign the value to a element in a BPEL variable (the one that is then used to invoke the service).
To do so, we have we have to cast the Any to the needed type. In this example we cast the "people" parameter to "persona". To do that in the Assign BPEL activity we have to choice the "people" parameter on the variable and then right-click:
Than the editor shows a dialog box to choice the type to be used for the cast:
Click Ok to complete the cast. The image belows shows the result of casting the Any type to a "persona" type.
Now the variable can be assigned using the mapper dialog as usual:
Due to this bug, it's possible that in older versions of GlassFishESB the cast to anyType doesn't work. If so, please update to a more recent version.