Processing a generic message

Question

Hello.
I am trying to create a BPEL flow that will process any message recieved by it.
It should add a header and send back, otherwise untouched.
I'm having the following problems :
1. I need to get all the headers and send them back, without knowing which and how many headers I may recieve, which seems impossible with the header variables extension (I didn't tackle this problem yet).
2. I need to send the entire body of the message back without modifying it.
I tried to solve problem 2 by creating a message which contains one part with type xsd:anyType (xsd:any won't compile). I could recieve the message with no problems, but it was sent back wrapped with a new element (named after the part name).
Does anyone has an idea?

Answer 1

1. I falsely expected that you are talking about JMS queues and you want to listen by JMS adapter to JMS messages and get header properties from JMS message. Because this was my recommendation. Now I know that you are talking about SOAP messages.
2. second one was also related to JMS adapter. But it might work with your SOAP message body.
in your WSDL you have to define following type:
define this namespace xmlns:opaque="http://xmlns.oracle.com/pcbpel/adapter/opaque/"
<schema targetNamespace="http://xmlns.oracle.com/pcbpel/adapter/opaque/"
xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" >
<element name="opaqueElement" type="base64Binary" />
</schema>
and then your message type should be following:
<message name="Read_msg">
<part name="opaque" element="opaque:opaqueElement"/>
</message>
Now you are getting content as encoded string. And in same way you can pass it to receiver. But I don't know if this works with SOAP body messages. Theoreticaly it should.
For point #1 I have one little question. Are you aware of following feature of BPEL?
in wsdl you can define something like this:
<message name="MessageIDHeader">
<part name="MessageID" element="wsa:MessageID"/>
</message>
<message name="ReplyToHeader">
<part name="ReplyTo" element="wsa:ReplyTo"/>
</message>
<!-- custom header -->
<message name="CustomHeaderMessage">
<part name="header1" element="tns:header1"/>
<part name="header2" element="tns:header2"/>
</message>
<binding name="HeaderServiceBinding" type="tns:HeaderService">
<soap:binding style="document"
transport="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/http"/>
<operation name="initiate">
<soap:operation style="document" soapAction="initiate"/>
<input>
<soap:header message="tns:ReplyToHeader" part="ReplyTo"
use="literal"/>
<soap:header message="tns:MessageIDHeader" part="MessageID"
use="literal"/>
<soap:header message="tns:CustomHeaderMessage"
part="header1" use="literal"/>
<soap:header message="tns:CustomHeaderMessage"
part="header2" use="literal"/>
<soap:body use="literal"/>
</input>
</operation>
</binding>
and then in receive you can get them in following way:
<variables>
<variable name="input"
messageType="tns:HeaderServiceRequestMessage"/>
<variable name="event"
messageType="tns:HeaderServiceEventMessage"/>
<variable name="output"
messageType="tns:HeaderServiceResultMessage"/>
<variable name="customHeader"
messageType="tns:CustomHeaderMessage"/>
<variable name="messageID"
messageType="tns:MessageIDHeader"/>
<variable name="replyTo"
messageType="tns:ReplyToHeader"/>
</variables>
<sequence>
<!-- receive input from requestor -->
<receive name="receiveInput" partnerLink="client"
portType="tns:HeaderService" operation="initiate"
variable="input"
bpelx:headerVariable="customHeader messageID replyTo" createInstance="yes"/>
But as you see you must enumerate all SOAP header properties :-(
And now oposite way for sending SOAP properties is following:
<variables>
<variable name="input" messageType="tns:HeaderTestRequestMessage"/>
<variable name="output" messageType="tns:HeaderTestResultMessage"/>
<variable name="request" messageType="services:HeaderServiceRequestMessage"/>
<variable name="response" messageType="services:HeaderServiceResultMessage"/>
<variable name="customHeader" messageType="services:CustomHeaderMessage"/>
</variables>
<!-- initiate the remote process -->
<invoke name="invokeAsyncService" partnerLink="HeaderService"
portType="services:HeaderService"
bpelx:inputHeaderVariable="customHeader"
operation="initiate" inputVariable="request"/>
HTH
Peter