What is SOAPam Client
The SOAPam Client allows NonStop applications to access, or "consume", Web services on any platform anywhere in the world. SOAPam hides the complexity of TCP/IP, HTTP, SSL and SOAP required to participate in Web services.Your NonStop application simply sends a formatted interprocess message (IPM) to the SOAPam Client Process (SOAPAMCP) which handles all of the details of mapping the IPM elements to a SOAP envelope, exchanging the SOAP envelope with the Web service provider, and parsing the SOAP response into the reply IPM.
What is a Web Service?
A Web service is a collection of software "methods" that can be invoked (called) through a network by a client application using the SOAP protocol. Methods typically accept one or more parameters, perform some action and return one or more
parameters.An example of a Web service might be a "BankingService" that provides methods such as "getAccountBalance", "debitAccount" and "creditAccount". For example, the "getAccountBalance" method might require an "accountNumber" parameter as input and return a "balance" parameter as output.
SOAPam Client Components
The diagram below depicts the SOAPam Client components as they are used at design time (during client application development) and at run time.
The components of the SOAPam Client product are described below:
Client Process (SOAPAMCP)
The Client Process relays messages sent from client applications through NonStop’s native inter-process message system to Web services anywhere in the world. SOAPAMCP hides the complexity of the TCP/IP, HTTP, SSL and SOAP protocols required to participate in Web services.
When you start the SOAPAMCP process, you specify the name of a Client Definition File (CDF) that contains a description of the Web service you want to access. The CDF is an XML-formatted text file that you create using the WSDL2CDF utility.
The SOAPAMCP process can be run as a standalone named process or configured as a Pathway serverclass for scalable access to the target Web service.
WSDL2CDF Utility
The WSDL2CDF utility creates a Client Definition File (CDF) by reading the Web Service Description Language (WSDL) file that describes the target Web service and augmenting it with mapping information. The Client Definition File (CDF) contains all of the information needed by the SOAPAMCP process to map a request IPM to a Web service request and map the Web service response back to an reply IPM.
CDF2DDL Utility
Your NonStop application interfaces with the SOAPAMCP process through the native interprocess message system. The format of the request and response interprocess messages (IPMs) used must correspond precisely to the definitions in the CDF file. The CDF2DDL utility facilitates this by producing NonStop DDL source for the IPMs. You then use the NonStop DDL utility to produce the host language-specific definitions that you compile into your application.