Oracle BPEL eventhandling with "onEvent" activity and business event

Question

I'm trying to use the bpel extension for eventhandling under the soa suite 11g ps3. I'm trying to subscribe to an event from the event delivery network but I get an error.

That's the code:

<eventHandlers>
  <onEvent bpelx:eventName="ns4:discountEvent" variable="discEvent" >
    <scope name="Scope1">
      <sequence name="Sequence1">
        <exit name="Exit1"/>
      </sequence>
    </scope>
  </onEvent>
</eventHandlers>

The compiler is giving me the following error:

Error(52): Activity <bpel:onEvent> must have "element", "messageType" attribute present.

I can't find any information on using the extension in an "onEvent" activity.

Any help appreciated!

Thanks, Chris

Answer 1

Event handlers work slightly different than other interaction activities. While receive, invoke etc. work on previously defined variables, the event handler defines its own variable which is visible in the scope of the onEvent's child activity. In order to give this variable a type, either a messageType or an element needs to be identified to be the declared type of the variable. This is why element or messageType is needed.

Please find below the related quote of the BPEL 2.0 spec:

The variable attribute, if it exists, identifies a variable local to the event handler that will contain the message received from the partner. [SA00087] The messageType attribute specifies the type of the variable by referencing a message type definition using its QName. The type of the variable (as specified by the messageType attribute) MUST be the same as the type of the input message defined by operation referenced by the operation attribute. Optionally the messageType attribute may be omitted and instead the element attribute substituted if the message to be received has a single part and that part is defined with an element type. That element type MUST be an exact match of the element type referenced by the element attribute. The variable and messageType/element attributes constitute the implicit declaration of a variable of that name and type within the associated scope associated of the event handler. If an element attribute is used then the binding of the incoming message to the variable declared in the event handler occurs as specified for the receive activity in section 10.4. Providing Web Service Operations – Receive and Reply .