Getting Started with IBM Data Studio for DB2

Appendix E – Advanced topics for developing data web services 379
Listing E.6 – Schema with verbose result set information
E.4 Transform input and output messages using XSL
You can assign an Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT) to one or more
of your operations to change the default XML input and output message format. This
feature allows you to customize the format of the messages that the client sees; for
example, to support industry standards or to changing or hiding default tag names in the
request and response messages. You can even generate non-XML outputs – like HTML
pages.
To give you some hands-on experience about stylesheets and what they can do for you,
we show you an easy way to transform your web service response into a service message
that is written in HTML format. All web browsers can interpret HTML code. As a result, you
can start your web service directly through a web browser and receive a formatted
response.
We use theGetBestSellingProductsByMonth operation and change its output into
HTML. You can simply use the HTTP GET binding to start the operation from a web
browser and verify the HTML response.
E.4.1 Creating an XSL stylesheet
Data Studio provides an XSL editor as well as the ability to test your XSL script. To create
a new XSL file:
1. Select File -> New -> Other -> XML.
2. Select your data development project as the parent folder and use the name
GetBestSellingProductsByMonthToHTML.xsl.