The Web services mapper is an formatter that is used by the Web services access operation when a Web service is invoked. The Web services mapper is required for data to be exchanged between the context and the Java objects from the Web services provider.
The Web services mapper is required because the data model of applications is different from the data model of Java Web services. For applications, data is described by using data fields, keyed collections (kColl), and indexed collections (iColl). Data in applications are then organized into contexts according to their business functions. However, Java Web services require Java objects as input parameters and send outgoing messages as Java objects. To enable data to be exchanged between applications and Java Web services, the Web services mapper is required by the Web services access operation to create data element mappings between the data model and the Java Web services data model
To enable applications to invoke Web services and receive data from Java Web services, Web services mappers are defined for every data element that is required by the application to invoke Web services. Data between the application and Java Web services cannot be exchanged until Web services mapper definitions for every message to and from Java Web services have been configured.
The Web services mapper can be defined in the format.xml file as a global scope entity. The Web services mapper can also be defined in a self-defined operation or a self-defined processor flow as a local scope entity.
For a Web services mapper to be identified by a Web services access operation, the Web services mapper must have a unique id defined in the externalized file.
The implementation class of the Web services mapper is the WSMapperConverter class. Class hierarchy of the Web services mapper.shows the class hierarchy of the Web services mapper. The public Object mapContextToObject(Context ctx) method signature in the WSMapperConverter class maps a context to Java objects. The public void mapObjectToContext(Object obj, Context ctx) method signature in the WSMapperConverter class maps the Java Objects returned by a Web service to a context.
