This topic applies only to the IBM Business Automation Workflow Advanced configuration.

The <anyType> element

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This topic only applies to BAW, and is located in the BAW repository. Last updated on 2025-03-13 12:15
The mapping of the <anyType> element is handled the same as any other complex type by the SDO APIs. Complex types are limited to a single type (that is, Customer, Address, and so on) but <anyType> allows any data object, regardless of type, to be set in the <anyType> element.
If maxOccurs > 1, then each data object in the list can be of a different type:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsd:schema xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" targetNamespace="http://AnyType">
  <xsd:complexType name="AnyType">
    <xsd:sequence>
      <xsd:element name="person" type="xsd:anyType"/>
	</xsd:sequence>
  </xsd:complexType>
</xsd:schema>

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsd:schema xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" targetNamespace="http://Customer">
  <xsd:complexType name="Customer">
    <xsd:sequence>
      <xsd:element name="name" type="xsd:string"/>
	</xsd:sequence>
  </xsd:complexType>
</xsd:schema>

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsd:schema xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:tns="http://Employee" targetNamespace="http://Employee">
  <xsd:complexType name="Employee">
    <xsd:sequence>
      <xsd:element name="id" type="xsd:string"/>
	</xsd:sequence>
  </xsd:complexType>
</xsd:schema>

	DataObject anyType = ...
DataObject customer = ...
DataObject employee = ...
	// Set the person to a Customer
anyType.set("person", customer);
	// The instance data will be a Customer
	// Displays "Customer"
	System.out.println(anyType.getDataObject("person").getName());
	// Set the person to an Employee
	anyType.set("person", employee);

<anyType> also allows for the setting of simple type values through wrapper data objects. These wrapper data objects have a single Property named "value" (element) that holds the simple type value.

The SDO APIs have been overridden to automatically wrap and unwrap these simple types and wrapper data objects when using the get<Type>/set<Type> APIs. The custom code samples below will show how to create the wrapper objects when trying to set an <anyType> in a data object. The wrapper classes to set the <anyType> only need to be created when the data content being used is a simple type. Regular complex types can be set directly on the <anyType> using the SDO set call.