Each Web method has an input, output and fault data type to be defined. A data type has a name and a schema definition.
For reverse-engineered Web services, input, output, and fault data types are set to the value found in the reversed WSDL schema. Data types that are not associated with any input, output, or fault are considered as shared schema definitions and are available in the component. They are displayed in the WSDL Schema tab of the component property sheet.
For newly-created operations, input and output data types are set to a default value, and are synchronized with parameter changes. Default data type name and schema are defined in the WSDL extension file and can be customized. However once modified, a data type becomes user-defined and cannot be synchronized any more. Fault data types are always user-defined.
You can reuse an existing data type defined in another operation. A check is available on components to make sure that no data type has different names inside the same component (see Checking an OOM).
When generating, the WSDL schema is composed of the shared schema definitions from the component, and a computed combination of all SOAP input, output, and fault definitions from the operations.
You can type the SOAP input, SOAP output and SOAP fault data type names in the appropriate tabs in the operation property sheet. Each tab contains a box, and a text zone in which you can edit the data type definition from the WSDL schema.