Understanding IFS Web Services

Note: This article describes Web Services exposed through SOAP Gateway. If routing, transformation and enveloping are not needed when accessing an IFS Web Service, it is recommended to use Web Services that are exposed natively through the application server (JAX-WS).

Contents

• The elements in an IFS Web Service
• How to get the WSDL for an IFS Web Service
• How to configure a remote IFS Web Service destination

The elements in an IFS Web Service

The combination of following elements defines an IFS Web Service

1. A Web Service consists of a Service Handler which is a collection of operations that logically belongs to each other. The operations in the Service Handler are defined as BizApi's of different types.
   Read more about: different types of BizApi's.
   Each BizApi has an XML representation for the request and the response.
2. The SOAP Gateway exposes the collection of BizApi's to the HTTP/HTTPs protocol and by
   using the SOAP format.
   Using HTTP-post a message-request (in SOAP Access Provider format) is posted to the SOAP Gateway.
   For more information read more about: Understanding SOAP Access Provider
3. A Web Service Definition Language (WSDL)
   WSDL is an XML-based language for describing Web services and how to access them.
   Using a HTTP-get a WSDL for a IFS Service handler can be downloaded.

The picture shows an IFS Web Service with all included elements

How to get the WSDL for an IFS Web Service

There are two ways to fetch the WSDL for a handler.

• Use the SOAP Gateway url and download the WSDL direct via HTTP-get.
  http://myHost:myPort/int/soapgateway?handler=myHandler
  
  For more detail information about this read: Understanding SOAP Access Provider
   
• Use the Interface Browser
   

How to configure a remote IFS Web Service destination

There is a possibility to execute an IFS Web Service remote in another J2EE Application Server.
Via the Message Routing a HTTP call to a remote SOAP Gateway can be configured.
This is useful when running multiple IFS Applications from one IFS Connect system.

• Set Envelope = SOAP_SIMPLE
• Set Encoding = UTF-8
• Set Url = The SOAP Gateway url on the remote system
• Set SOAP Action =  urn:soap_access_provider:MY_BIZAPI_NAME
• Set Login and Password = To a user and password that have authorities to run the BizApi on the remote system.