My WS clents can request an employee record, update it, and then return it
to me. Because each record contains dozens of fields and I prefer to limit
the number of service operations, I've specified one operation
updateEmployee(employeeRecord) rather than dozens of individual operations
such as setName(name), setDOB(date), setSalary(salary) and so on.
One problem with this approach is that the client sends me the whole record
which I then have to diff to find out what changed. In an attempt to
transmit just the changes, the client can create a new employeeRecord
object, set just those fields that have changed (and the employee ID) and
send that back to me. With an Axis client, this results in an
employeeRecord object wtih some fields set but most fields nil. All unset
boolean fields, however, are false rather than nil. Now I can get around
this by using java.lang.Boolean rather than the intrinsic boolean but I
don't know how this would impact non-Axis, non-Java clients. Would they
fold java.lang.Boolean back to some intrinsic boolean and hence always send
me false rather than nil? If so then I'm dead, of course, because I would
then be updating based on that false value when the client hadn't even
specified a change to that field.
Or, from a higher perspective, should my interface be completely different?
Thanks very much.
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