Size definition

The IDL syntax used to declare an array is the following

  typedef string ArrayString[2];

and is used with the operations as well as all the others data types.

  ArrayString echoArrayString(in ArrayString e);

The major difference between this kind of data type and the Java array is the size declaration. In fact, in Java we usually define the arrays without indicating the associated size that it will be passed during the construction of the object. The IDL syntax, instead, obligates the developer to define the array size.

This situation creates a little problem during the wsdl generation of the endpoint. In fact, the Java source of the corba interface produced does not contain the information about the array size and when this code is visited to generate the WSDL the result does not contain the size too (of course).

  String [] echoArrayString(String [] e);

The WSDL generated does not express the equivalent interface defined in the IDL file because the minOccurs and the maxOccurs of the type are wrong.

<xsd:complexType name="ArrayOfString">
<xsd:sequence>
<xsd:element maxOccurs="unbounded" minOccurs="0" name="string" nillable="true" type="xsd:string"/>
<xsd:sequence>
<xsd:complexType>

Unfortunately the stub of the corba client generated is compliant with the IDL file, but we expose our service using the WSDL file.

At runtime, the corba client fails if you don't pass an array with a correct size but this information is reported only in the IDL file.

Unsupported array of octet

byte[] echoArrayOctet (byte[] e);

The component supports any kind of array except the array of octet because it is translated in a wsdl data type not supported (xsd:base64Binary).

<xsd:element name="echoArrayOctet">
<xsd:complexType>
<xsd:sequence>
<xsd:element maxOccurs="1" minOccurs="1" name="e" nillable="true" type="xsd:base64Binary"/>
<xsd:sequence>

This data type is managed in a different way beacause the java to wsdl specifications maps an array of byte (the associated Java type of the octet IDL data type) directly to a XML Schema data type called base64Binary.