The returnValue column can either be defined as a text value, such as SBL_001, or may be defined by a parameter name. For instance, if we look at the first function, lookupXRef, this function has a return value of RefColumnValue. As this is the name of a parameter (RefColumnValue), the value of this parameter is the return value of the function to the XSLT.

For example, if the call to the lookupXRef function looks like the following:

lookupXRef( oramds:/apps/AIAMetaData/xref/CUSTOMERPARTY_PARTYLOCATIONID.xref",
"COMMON_ID", "COMMON_001", "SBL_ID", false())

Then the value COMMON_001 is returned, as this is the value of the RefColumnValue parameter that was passed.

For the markForDelete function, the value true is returned, converted to Boolean.

For the lookupXRef1M and lookupPopulatedColumns functions, a node-set is returned by the function. This node-set contains elements of the following form:

<column name="columnNameHere">columnValueHere</column>

As shown in Figure 41-41, the default value for the lookupXRef1M function is:

:RefColumnName:RefColumnValue:ColumnName:RefColumnValue

This encodes the column names and values for two column nodes that are returned in a node-set from the function. The first character defines the delimiter to be used in parsing the information. If your data contains a colon (:), you can use any character as the delimiter that is not in your test data, by putting that character as the first character and using it to delimit the data (say, #abc:def#abc:ghi).

For example, if we have the following function call to lookupXRef1M:

lookupXRef1M ("oramds:/mydata", "COMMON_ID", "COMMON_001", "SAP_ID", false())

Then using the default definition, for a return value of :RefColumnName:RefColumnValue:ColumnName:RefColumnValue, you would receive back two column elements:

<column name="COMMON_ID">COMMON_001</column>
<column name="SAP_ID">COMMON_001</column>

If you change the line in the DVM to have a returnValue of :SAP_ID:SAP_001:SBL_ID:SBL_001:ORCL_ID:ORCL_001, then the function returns three column nodes:

<column name="SAP_ID">SAP_001</column>
<column name="SBL_ID">SBL_001</column>
<column name="ORCL_ID">ORCL_001</column>