In this chapter of the documentation set, "web services" means "SOAP web webservices", e.g. services using the XML-based SOAP protocol. Other types of web services exist: for example REST services (which will be added to TOPICA in the future).

Web services are typically used for Integration purposes: An application developer implementing integration with external systems may choose to do so using web services.

Note
There are other ways to implement integrations - refer to Integration . So when implementing integrations, do not automatically jump to using web services - consider which tool is right for the job.

It is also possible to use web services internally within an application built with TOPICA. A typical scenario is to write JavaScript / AJAX code (running client-side, i.e. in the browser), that executes server-side code (on the web server) - e.g. to compute some value, that requires access to the database.

This chapter describes web services exposed by TOPICA, i.e. when TOPICA acts a as "web service producer". This is used when external systems need to call TOPICA (to initiate some action in or read data from a TOPICA).

The other way a round - when TOPICA acts as "web service consumer" - is the scenario, when TOPICA needs to call an external system to initiate an action in that system. To use this scenario, you will need documentation for for the external system in question (refer to Web service example, however, where a TOPICA application acts both as producer and consumer of web services).

Categories of webservices exposed by TOPICA

• Built in web services
• Auto generated web services
• Custom web services