Namespace prefix in SOAP Elements causes problems in XI

Question

Hi guys,
I'm using code generated by NW Developer Studio for use inside Portal components acting as a web service consumer. The problem is that the code generated includes a namespace prefix for each element in the body of the message, but XI doesn't like the namespace prefixes and throws back a DeliveryException.
The SOAP message created by the generated NWDS code is:
<SOAP-ENV:Envelope xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:wn3="http://www.w3.org/1999/XMLSchema" xmlns:wn2="http://www.w3.org/2000/10/XMLSchema" xmlns:wn1="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:wn0="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:wn4="http://allieddomecq.com/poc" xmlns:tns="http://allieddomecq.com/poc">
     <SOAP-ENV:Body>
          <wn4:PortalSOAP_MT_Request>
               <wn4:CustomerIdentifier>0001000064</wn4:CustomerIdentifier>
               <wn4:SalesOrganization>ES50</wn4:SalesOrganization>
               <wn4:SystemIdentifier>R3D</wn4:SystemIdentifier>
          </wn4:PortalSOAP_MT_Request>
     </SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>
The problem is the "wn4" prefixes on the CustomerIdentifier, SalesOrganization, and SystemIdentifier tags. When we send the soap request from XML Spy without the prefixes, the response comes back OK with the expected data.
I've had a very good look around the generated code - the serializers for creating the soap request - but could not find what exactly might be changed to leave off the prefixes.
Alternatively, is there something I could ask our XI consultant to do, to make his component accept the request with the redundant prefixes in the tags?
Many thanks for any advice/help,
Laura

Answer 1

Hi Laura,
you have to realize that the two documents
<ns:CustomerRecord xmlns:ns="http://company.com">
<ns:CustomerNumber> </ns:CustomerNumber>
<ns:CustomerDetails> </ns:CustomerDetails>
</ns:CustomerRecord>
and
<ns:CustomerRecord xmlns:ns="http://company.com">
<CustomerNumber> </CustomerNumber>
<CustomerDetails> </CustomerDetails>
</ns:CustomerRecord>
from an XMl point of view have totally fifferent structure. Thus, a mapping which is able to deal with the first structure will fail for the second and vice versa.
Surely, both structures somehow can carry the same information, but they do this with different languages (Maybe you can compare this to the fact, that you may deliver the same information in English or in German language).
When you model the structure in Integration Repository using datatypes and message types (what I think you did), you will always get a structure that looks like the second one. This is just a convention (like the convention that all information in this forum should be presented in English). When defining a message mapping for this structure it also relies on this fact and thus will not understand the other kind of document.
External Definitions are more flexible. They are also able to understand structures that are modelled the other way. This greater flexibility is due to the fact that External Definitions were designed to understand structures that come from an external world where different conventionts might be used.
To come to a conclusion: If the structure you have to deal with has been defined externally then it is not intended that you model it inside the Integration Builder using datatypes and message types. In this case the external source should provide a description of the message as XSD, WSDL, or DTD. You upload this as External Definition, and everything works fine.
If you have designed the structure yourself, you can model it with datatypes and message types. But then you will always get a structure which looks like the second one. In this case you should make sure that all other participants in the game also stick to that structure. Then everything will be fine, too.
Greetings Stephan