Problem with "usage" attribute in PCML

[Niall.Smart@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Hi all,

I am using PCML to call a program which takes a struct, some of the struct
members are input parameters, and some are output only.  However it seems
that PCML does not understand and/or use the usage attribute of "data" or
"struct" when they are not top-level arguments specified under "program".
For example, when using the following PCML:

<struct name="someStruct">
     <data name="memberA" type="char" length="1" usage="input" init="X"/>
     <data name="memberB" type="char" length="1" usage="output"/>
</struct>


<program name="someProgram" path="somePath">
     <data name="someParameter" usage="inputoutput" type="struct" struct
="someStruct"/>
</program>

You get the following exception:

com.ibm.as400.data.PcmlException: Value is not set. Processing <data>
element 'someProgram.someParameter.memberB'.
     at com.ibm.as400.data.PcmlDataValues.toBytes(PcmlDataValues.java:475)
     at com.ibm.as400.data.PcmlData.toBytes(PcmlData.java:984)
     at com.ibm.as400.data.PcmlData.toBytes(PcmlData.java:974)
     at com.ibm.as400.data.PcmlProgram.callProgram(PcmlProgram.java:570)
     at com.ibm.as400.data.PcmlDocument.callProgram(PcmlDocument.java:378)
     at
com.ibm.as400.data.ProgramCallDocument.callProgram(ProgramCallDocument.java:247)
     at TestCall.main(TestCall.java:32)
Exception in thread "main"

I didn't expect this to happen, as memberB is an output parameter.  The
reason seems to be that only com.ibm.jt400.data.PcmlProgram.callProgram()
checks the usage attribute, if you look at lines 551 you can see it skips
calling PcmlStruct.toBytes() where usage = "output".  If the struct usage
is "input" or "inputoutput" then it calls PcmlStruct.toBytes() (line 554).
This method just iterates over the members of the struct and calls toBytes
() on them, without checking if they are input or output.  Hence the usage
attribute on memberB above is ignored and the exception occurs in
PcmlData.toBytes().


Is this the desired behaviour?  Any comments or suggestions welcome :)

Regards,


Niall



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