Synapta Services Builder for Screens provides support for Web services. Web services, which are generated in design-time, can be used in a variety of development environments to expose host access tasks as Web services and then be made available as resources to other applications and application components.
Web services are software components that can be invoked across the Internet, or your intranet. They are accessed through the common XML-based protocol SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) over a common transport protocol such as HTTP, SMTP, or JMS, which means that your client can be implemented in any language, and run on any operating system. This makes problems with the incompatibility between languages and platforms obsolete and lets you focus on implementing your business solutions in your preferred language and on your preferred platform and then exposing them as a set of Web services.
The Web Services Description Language (WSDL) file, which is also XML-based, describes the function and location of a Web service. To use the Web service, your custom client application reads the WSDL file, then uses SOAP to call the Web service's methods and get back results.
To generate Web services, the Designer Studio must be installed on the same computer as either your Web services run-time, or, as is the case with .NET, in the same development environment.
If you are configuring a Web service to run against a Runtime Service installed on a separate server, see Configuring Your Development Environment.
During design-time, you can generate Web services to provide host access functionality within the following three environments:
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BEA WebLogic 8.1 & 7.03 are supported via J2EE Session EJB and connectors, which are available in the management component of the Services Builders. For more information about alternatives for the BEA WebLogic environment, see Using the J2EE Connector Architecture. |
| Environment | What is generated |
|---|---|
| Apache Axis | Java beans. These beans are implemented as Java classes. When the beans are generated, an ANT script is also generated for installing the beans in your runtime environment. In addition, when you generate Web services for Apache Axis, a service bean is also generated. |
| BEA WebLogic | Enterprise Java beans. These beans can be published to MCS or deployed to a BEA runtime environment where they will run as Web services and make use of the Attachmate JCA Adapter for WebLogic. The adapter provides Attachmate Synapta Services Builder with the ability to interact directly with the BEA WebLogic application server.
When the beans are generated, an ANT script is also generated for installing the beans in your BEA runtime environment. |
| .NET components | Applications that use .NET components implement IConnectorAccess. For information about the methods available, refer to the Javadocs for Attachmate Interfaces.
The components can be published to MCS or deployed to a .NET runtime environment where they will run as Web services, or remotable objects. |
For a table of all generated files and where they're located for each type of interface object, including each Web service environment, see Generated and Published Files.
The following illustration shows the seven main steps to making your Web service available to client applications.
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