Using RESTful Services with Process Designer
Representational State Transfer (REST) services provide the ability to use services that focus on a system's resources and how they can be transferred over HTTP, using HTTP methods. A RESTful service is simpler to use than the SOAP-based Web service. However, this simplicity requires knowledge of the service and how to communicate that to the Process Designer.
RESTful services follow these basic principles:
- Use HTTP methods: PUT, DELETE, GET, POST
- Stateless
- Expose directory structure-like URIs
- Commonly interact with XML and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)
You can use the Process Designer to invoke RESTful services and use them within your process. You can also expose a service as RESTful to be consumed by others.
After you create and deploy your project, it is available to you as either a SOAP-based web service or a RESTful service. This allows you to execute your service using standard HTTP calls sending and receiving common data formats such as JSON and XML.
See Tutorial 5: Importing a Service to import an external service, build the process, and test the process both as a SOAP Web service and a RESTful service.
Additional information
There are multiple sites on the Internet that contain detailed information on using and consuming RESTful services. You can learn more here:
- Building Web Services the REST Way
- Going from SOAP to REST Web Services
- Getting Started with REST Testing
The Process Design Studio Reference Library also contains links to valuable REST information sites.
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