The Advanced tab of the flow message
editor displays four main folders, titled Messages, Types, Groups,
and Elements and Attributes.
Each folder displays a different type of information
or displays a different view of information shown in other folders:
- The Messages folder displays all the messages
in the message file and shows their data types, whether simple or
complex. Together these messages define a data area that the operations
in your service flow can access at runtime to store and retrieve data.
- The Types folder displays the simple and
complex data types that you define for the message file. Typically
each data type in this folder is used to specify the data structure
of some message component in the Messages folder.
- The Groups folder displays any groups that
you define for the message file. A group is similar to a complex data
type. It can contain simple and complex data and typically is used
to specify part of the data structure of a data type or a message
element.
- The Elements and Attributes folder provides
a collective view of all the elements and attributes that are defined
in the message file.
The flow message editor uses a single set of data (which it reads
initially from the message file) from which it draws the information
that it displays in these four folders. When you modify an element
in one of these folders, and this modification changes the value of
some item in the editor's single set of data, then the flow message
editor immediately updates the information displayed in the other
folders as necessary to reflect the change.
Also, the flow message editor tightly links the characteristics
of a group with the characteristics of data types that use that group,
and likewise it tightly links characteristics of data types with the
characteristics of declared variables that use that data type. For
example:
- Bottom-up changes:
- If you change the structure of a group then the flow message editor
automatically updates any data types in the same message file that
use that group.
- If you change the structure of a data type then the editor automatically
updates any variables in the same message file that use that data
type.
- Top-down changes:
- If you change the structure of a declared variable, then the editor
automatically updates the data type of the variable.