An InputObject is the interface used by the presentation block to get programming language typed data from data encoded in a message.
The implementation of an InputObject contains the encoded data. When the presentation block asks for data the implementation of InputObject is responsible for converting the encoded representation of the data to the types expected by the programming language.
A particular encoding would subclass InputObject. The subclass would provide methods to get the data types appropriate to the presentation block (e.g., simple types such as int or boolean, all the way to any type derived from java.io.Serializable.).
Note: the protocol block may also use the InputObject to obtain header metadata.
@author Harold Carr