ObjectType (Complex Type)

Common supertype for all identity objects. Defines basic properties that each object must have to live in our system (identifier, name).

Objects consists of identifier and name (see definition below) and a set of properties represented as XML elements in the object's body. The properties are represented as first-level XML elements (tags) of the object XML representation and may be also contained in other tags (e.g. extension, attributes) that are marked by a propertyContainer annotation. The QName (namespace and local name) of the element holding the property is considered to be a property name.

Single-value properties must appear as a none or one instance of the XML element holding the value.

Multi-value properties must appear as none or more instances of the same XML element. Multi-valued properties are regarded as unordered sets. Duplicate values are allowed, but duplicates should not be preserved by the implementations. The implementations should reduce duplicate values to a single value if it is possible and efficient.

If an element for a specific property does not appear in the object it means that the property value is undefined (property does not exists). This is a different state as compared to passing an empty XML element. Empty XML element means that the property exists, but has an empty (null) value. Implementations must be able to handle undefined (non-existent) properties, but may NOT be able to handle empty (null) values. The use of empty (null) values is DISCOURADGED.

It is not mandated by this specification how to pass ordered lists and multi-value properties with duplicates. However it is recommended to use single value properties with appropriate complex XML data structures to hold such data.

The following XML snippet is an example of the object (omitting namespace definitions, but assuming default namespace to be the target namespace of this schema definition):

                
        <user oid="d3adm3a4" version="42">
            <name>foobar</name>
            <extension>
              <foo:geekName>F00 B4r</foo:geekName>
              <org:guild>Societus Geekus Europeus</org:guild>
              <org:guild>Basset User Group</org:guild>
              <pet:pet><pet:species>dog</pet:species><pet:breed>basset</pet:breed><pet:name>Doggie</pet:name></pet:pet>
              <pet:pet><pet:species>mouse</pet:species><pet:breed>logitech</pet:breed><pet:name>Mousee</pet:name></pet:pet>
              <com:shoppingPreferences>
                  <com:tShirt><com:size>XXL</com:size><com:color>#000000</com:color></com:tShirt>
                  <com:tie><com:preference>no thanks</com:preference></com:tie>
              </com:shoppingPreferences>
            </extension>
            <fullName>Foo Bar</fullName>
            <givenName>Foo</givenName>
            <familyName>Bar</familyName>
        </user>

The above example describes an object with identifier "d3adm3a4", name "foobar" and type defined by its top-level element User that corresponds to URI "http://midpoint.evolveum.com/xml/ns/identity/1#User". The object has 7 properties. Three of them are standard properties defined by this schema:

Standard properties "fullName", "givenName" and "familyName" in default namespace. These are single-valued string properties.

All the other properties are non-standard "extended" properties, but they are considered equal to the standard attributes. They are quarantined in the <extension> tag only to avoid XSD unique particle attribution (UPA) problems. In the above example the non-standard properties are:

Property "geekName" in namespace defined by "foo" prefix. This is also single-valued string property.

Multi-valued non-standard property "guild". It is a string property with multiple values. Multiple values are represented by providing multiple instances of XML elements in the document. Such properties are typically used for roles, groups, etc.

Complex property "pet". This property is defined by complex XML type, using XML sub-elements to represent structured data. Note that the use of XML attributes is discouraged in the properties, although it might be possible in some cases. This is also multi-valued property.

Complex property "shoppingPreferences". This property is using complex XML type to form a structure of XML elements to represent data. This is a single-valued property. Note that the sub-elements "tShirt" and "tie" are NOT considered to be properties.

QName-URI mapping:

For the purpose of this schema and all components that are using it, URIs and QNames are considered equivalent. This is required by WWW architecture and also helps avoid some drawbacks and bugs in XML-related implementations that usually do not deal QNames well.

The QNames are mapped to URIs by concatenating namespace URI and a local name. If URI does not end with slash (/) or hash (#) character, slash is concatenated to the URI before adding the local name. The URI-QName mapping is the reverse process.