Addressing Schema Elements

All process data and activity input are represented as an XML schema. Regardless of where the data comes from or its format, ActiveMatrix BusinessWorks represents the data as a schema tree. The data can be simple (strings, numbers, booleans, and so on), or it can be a complex element. Complex elements are structures that contain other schema elements, either simple elements or other complex elements. Both simple and complex elements can also repeat. That is, they can be lists that store more than one element of the given type.

XPath is used to specify which schema element you would like to refer to. For example, the following schema may be available for an activity’s input:

The process data area of the example input tab illustrates the output schema of the activities in the process. There are three output schema, each a root node in the process data area: GetCustomerInformation, GetOrderInformation, and GetOrderId. Each of these schema has its own associated structure, for example, GetCustomerInformation has a set of simple values and GetOrderInformation has simple data and other complex data.

To reference a particular data item in any of these schema, you start with the root node and then use slashes (/) to indicate a path to the desired data element. For example, if you wish to specify the Street attribute in the ShipName complex element that is in the GetOrderInformation node, you would use the following syntax:

$GetOrderInformation/ShipName/Street

The path starts with a dollar sign to indicate it begins with a root node, then continues with node names using slashes, like a file or directory structure, until the desired location is named.