Quick Guide to the TaskCentre Generic Web Services Tool - DAA ...

The TaskCentre Web Services Connector Tool: Opening the Door to a World of OpportunityIntroductionThe phrase ‘web services’ has been around formore than ten years in one form or another butlately the use of this terminology and, moreimportantly, the technology itself has increasedexponentially.To date, most organisations have adopted aproprietary approach to their IT infrastructure.Applications have been purchased, bespokedevelopment has occurred and often significantresources have been committed to glue togetherthese unconnected or disparate systems.It is easy to state the problems and costsassociated with this historical approach to theprovision of information, but without a viablealternative organisations are left with little or noother valid choice.The advancement in and standardisation of webservices has been the IT industry’s response to thisproblem and the uptake of web service technologyis now growing rapidly.In light of the above, this short whitepaper isdesigned to introduce the concept of web services,what the TaskCentre Web Services Connector Toolcan do and what web services it will enableconnection to.What are web services?Web services are interface entry points intoapplications. They can be used across the internet,or within a local network. A web service provideswith the consumer access to functionality of theapplication that has been exposed by the webservice.with extensive business functionality.What does the TaskCentre webServices Connector Tool do?The TaskCentre Web Service Connector Toolprovides access to a plethora of web services. Itenables a very wide range of tasks to be created,perhaps integrating applications, automating useractivity, improving adherence to procedures andrules and many others perhaps unknown to ustoday.Typically the Tool is used to call a web service;when involves passing data from TaskCentre to theweb service. This could be data structured asXML, parameters in an HTTP request, and/or adocument attachment. The web service willtypically reply with a success or error messagewhere the success message contains XML.In addition some web services require multiplemessages to be passed back and forth. TheTaskCentre Web Service Connector will allowthese to be incorporated into a single operation.Where the underlying API has functionality tosupport wrapping messages into transactions (e.g.a start transaction message is sent at the beginningof a sequence of messages and a commit messageis sent at the end, and all message updates will rollback if any message produces an error) thenTaskCentre’s web service operations will enablethis.Security is implemented in many different ways indifferent web services so the Tool allows thecommon standardised ways to be invoked throughsimple point and click selections and the Nonstandardmethods to be configured throughmessage calls. The standardised methods include:There are a very wide range of web servicesavailable using a range of ‘standards’ andtechnology. Web services can be divided intofunctional / commercial categories:⇒Services on the internet – these may besubscription or pay per use, or may be free,such as government services.⇒⇒⇒⇒No authenticationBasic / Digest Authentication (simpleusername and password)Windows AuthenticationOpen Authentication (OAUTH)⇒ Application APIs, often within a localintranet, but also hosted on the internet -these are often quite substantial applications