Something Bothering me

[Former Member]

I know this is a real junior question but honestly I have been developing in XI for about a year but have never used an Attribute when defining a data type...

What exactly is an attribute? What is it used for? How is it different to a normal field?

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

these are all part answers can someone please give me a relativley in depth explanation?

[former_member192343 · Accepted solution]

http://www.xmlfiles.com/xml/xml_attributes.asp

[Former Member]

Hi Ricardo,

1) as you can see in graphical mapping you can't give values to an elements that has children elements. so if you have to add any values to this element you need an attribute.

2) If you use the JDBC adapter for receiving messages you need an attribut as you can see int the documentation.

Regards Mario

[Former Member]

OK I think I understand... SO in the instance where you want to apply a value to an element which has children Elements then you need to use an attribute to do this...

So in what circumstances would you need to do this? And also are there any circumstance which would you require to have 3 or 4 attributes to one element?

[udo_martens]

Hi,

>>>>so if you have to add any values to this element you need an attribute.

wrong!

Attributes cant have node children, elements can have children nodes <b>or </b> values.

The sequence of elements can be parsed, sequence of attributes not. Values of attributes has to be in quotations.

Regards,

Udo

[former_member192343]

you can bring some data in attributes as in fields, but with some restrictions

[former_member192343]

<item attribute="attribute">
field
</item>