Various workspace operations tailor their behaviour to a particular data type. For instance, SelectInput allows the user to select an input from a set of inputs and pass its data through to its output. The user can choose the data type being passed through. Similarly, a user can select the type of ObjectGroup that a ComposeGroup operation composes. Data sources and data requesters can also be tailored by the user to operate on a particular data type and to assign a particular name to the workspace input or output they represent. These are all examples of polymorphic operations. Polymorphic operations allow users to select a particular data type (and optionally a name for the data) that the operation uses. How the data type and data name is used is operation-dependent, but typically one or more inputs or outputs has its data changed to the new type and name. Some polymorphic operations only allow the data type to be modified and not the name.

For most polymorphic operations, the user can right-click on the operation and then elect to change the data type or name through the context menu.

See also: PolymorphicDataOperation API documentation