The 11g SOA Suite brings us the Service Fabric that has messages flowing from one SCA Service Component to the next – Mediators and BPEL processes are called from inbound adapter services or external consumers and may call out to references to external providers or outbound adapter service. In this idyllic world, much of the work actually going on is the mapping of messages from one (service’s) domain to the next. Of course we try to converse as much as possible in terms of canonical message structures, but sooner or later we come to the boundary of our domain and need to transform again to some domain or service specific message structure. Domain Value Mapping

In addition to the mapping of the message structure, we usually have to put up with some level of value mapping as well: different domains frequently use -slightly or hugely -different labels for the same concept. One domain may use M, F and N for gender whereas another has MALE, FEMALE and UNKNOWN or even MAN, WOMAN and UNDECIDED. Messages that have to convey the gender will have to abide by the vocabulary in the target domain. That means that frequently message have to undergo domain value mapping in addition to plain More >