This documentation supports the 21.3 version of Action Request System.

To view an earlier version, select the version from the Product version menu.

Publishing the AR System functionality as a web service

Web services provide a simple, platform-agnostic method for application integration. By using standard messaging protocols and service definitions to support computer-to-computer interaction over a network, web services allow application integration regardless of the hardware or software platforms and independent of the programming languages in which the applications are written. Web services enable AR System functionality to be available over the web (publishing), and enable AR System applications to access third-party applications. 

You publish a web service to make AR System functionality available over the web by creating a web service object, associated forms, and optional workflow. AR System developers can use a web service to make AR System operations (such as submit, modify, and query) available to other applications. Web services that are published in AR System can be very basic (for example, creating a record in the AR System server database) or more complex (for example, processing a purchase order that spans multiple forms).

You consume a private or public web service to obtain external information for use in an AR System application by creating a form and an associated filter that uses a Set Fields action.

The following web services are installed with AR System server :

  • User web service
  • Group web service
  • Roles web service

You can use or customize these three web services to allow external applications to find, create, and update entries in the User, Group, and Roles forms. These web services are also defined in the SystemWebService.def file, located in the ~InstallForm/en directory.

Each web service consists of the following resources:

  • base form on which it operates. You specify this form when you create the web service. For web services that span across multiple AR System  forms, the base form is the master form.
  • list of CreateGet, or Set operations. When you create a web service, by default, it has these named operations: OpCreateOpGet, OpList, and OpSet. You can have multiple operations of the same type, or you can have no operations of a particular type.
  • mapping that specifies how individual elements of incoming and outgoing XML documents are mapped to fields and forms of the AR System . These are essentially the input and output parameters of the web service.
  • An association with XML Schema (.xsd file). Global elements and complex types referred to in the schema can be used in mappings associated with operations.

You can consume an external web service by creating a Web Service Set Fields filter action to enter data from the web service into a base form. You can then view the form in an  AR System client. The Web services support only the Unicode characters that are supported in Apache Xerces.

The following sections provide information about using web services with AR System . They describe how to publish the AR System  functionality as a web service and how to invoke external web services to exchange data between AR System  and web service applications.

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