ACTION-58 Look into issues surrounding the use of the 'any' type in the IDL

Hi all,

I have been investigating into this issue and I'm reporting back to the 
WG. Also I propose possible solutions. First of all I have checked the 
official OMG IDL-WSDL mapping [1]. According to this mapping an OMG-IDL 
is mapped to an xsd:anyType. However, in [2] there are some concerns 
about the usage of anyType in WSDL and WebServices. The good news is 
that we don't need to strictly follow the OMG IDL-WSDL mappings. So

Taking into account these two facts, I'm proposing the following approach:

Let's create a new DDR-API type called DDRAny. This type will be defined as:

typedef  any DDRAny;

In the IDL-API spec everytime that we cannot commit to an specific type 
we will use DDRAny.
In our normative WSDL binding we will map DDRAny to a xsd:string, 
avoiding the xsd:anyType / xsd:any. In the binding rules section we will 
create a rule that will say:

If the language has a generic type, such as Object in Java or void* in 
C++, it should be mapped to it. Otherwise it should be mapped to a string.

Another issue, is, do we really need to deal with anys? The answer is, 
yes, at least to model the context key.

That's all for now

Best Regards

[1] http://www.omg.org/docs/formal/03-11-02.pdf
[2] http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/ws-tip-xsdcaution.html

Received on Tuesday, 31 July 2007 17:22:04 UTC