Working With External Web services |
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Web services are self-contained, modular applications that can be invoked over the Web. These services range across different businesses, partners, customers and so on catering to various business activities. A Web service that is exterior to Process Platform environment is referred as an external Web service. These Web services enable you to exchange services on the Internet. They are created and published by Process Platform and consumed by external parties or vice versa.
The service could be as simple as World Time Service that gives the time for a city, a credit card transaction or a full blown business service. A complex service would include other services within.
Generally, a Web service like the World Time Service is created, exposed on the web and maintained by a company. Such companies are called the Providers. A partner or a customer would use the service to find time for different cities as required. These users are called Consumers. The consumers can integrate these services into their business services. A web based travel booking service can use the World Time Service.
A consumer can use an exposed Web service only when he understands how to invoke it. Every Web service needs a contract between the provider and consumer. In the World Time Service the provider has to mention that the consumer has to send a city name and the country name. The provider would also mention what the consumer would receive in return, which is here the time. The provider may mention that the format of the time is 24 hours with day light savings. This information is shared in the form of a definition called WSDL. The interface definition clearly states what the provider wants and what it returns. The interface also contains other information related to invocation. Sending a city's name asking for its time is the Request and returning the time is the Response. Thus, a service sends responses to all the requests it receives from consumers. The request and the response are Messages.
To define a standard format for the messages that flow between requests and Web services, Web services use the extensible markup language (XML) standard. XML is an industry-standard, platform-independent syntax for describing and structuring data.
Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) is an XML and SOAP-based specification for publishing and locating information about Web services. UDDI provides a framework that enables business entities to describe and classify their services, and provide the technical details about the interfaces of their Web services. It also allows organizations to search for and locate required Web services.
Process Platform provides a Web service wizard that allows you to generate Web service operations for the external Web services.
This section contains the following topics:
- Searching for External Web services
- Generating Process Platform Web service Operations for External Web services
- Configuring Access to External Web services
- Personal External Access
- Publishing Web services to an External UDDI Registry
- External Web services over SSL/TLS
Important
To access External Web services, you must set the following property in the browser:
- Navigate to Tools > Internet Options > Security > Internet (or Local Intranet) > Custom level > Miscellaneous.
- Set Access data sources across domains option to Enable or Prompt.
- Select Internet or Local Intranet based on the way you are accessing Process Platform.
Note:
For information about intercepted SOAP requests, refer to Interceptors.