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According the BPEL specification, it is allowed to have an import declaration without the namespace attribute: "The namespace attribute specifies an absolute URI that identifies the imported definitions. This attribute is optional. An import element without a namespace attribute indicates that external definitions are in use which are not namespace qualified. ..." But our implementation doesn't support such case. The problem is quite complex because there are restrictions at the tooling and server sides both. Actually I don't know if the restriction still exists at server side. The only mentioning is the special validation rule, which informs, that it is not supported by runtime: "WARNING: The attribute "namespace" is required by the Sun BPEL SE for this element" (import element implies here). The BPEL designer doesn't allow creating import without namespace. But it can be done manually. You can create a schema without targetNamespace and add import section to BPEL sources. Eventually different errors and exceptions appears after such action.
I analyzed source code and I think it is possible to fix the problem at BPEL editor side for about 2-3 days. But I'm not sure about its priority.
It's necessary to be aware about some restrictions while importing a schema without targetNamespace: 1. A namespace declaration must not be generated for such import. It isn't allowed to declare a prefix for empty namespace. 2. The imported schema pretends to be used in default namespace. So default namespace must be not declared. 3. A variable declaration, which uses type (or element) from the schema (without targetNamespace) must have value of "type" (or "element") attribute without a prefix. 4. The XPath expressions have to contain steps without prefixes, if the steps correspond to global components of a schema without targetNamespace.
Increasing to P2 since it's from real customer use case.
Changed TM
Will fix in the next release.