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Level 2

Hello,

in LC ES 2 there's still the old "object" type as part of WorkflowDSC but it's regarded as deprecated and existing only for backwards compatibility.

While I understand that orchestrateable service operations should use either current LC types or define their own custom types mapped to Java classes/types, I'm wondering if there's a non-deprecated way of passing along basic Java objects/variables that are not matching any specific LC variable type and that do not match custom types declared in the custom DSC.

Specifically, I'm dealing with small byte arrays. While the "LC version" of a byte array is probably a Document variable, wrapping my byte arrays in Documents is a bit overkill and, especially, I'm dealing with an interface that by definition is required to use byte arrays as input and output parameters.

Currently I'm using the deprecated "object" to represent my byte arrays but I'm wondering:

  1. What are the potential problems related to using the deprecated "object" variable type? (that is, beyond the type suddenly disappearing in later releases)
  2. Is there any plan to reintroduce a generic variable type if the current "object" will not be preserved?
  3. Is it mandatory to define custom components that only use LC types or declared custom classes as input/output types? (if yes, I'll then add this to the long description of a bug I'm going to add in Watson)

Thanks in advance for your reply and best regards,

Giovanni