Web Services - Overview

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Nigel Stone
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1 Web Services - Overview Gonzalo de Salterain BMC Support- Onboarding

2 Agenda What is a Web Service? How does this feature benefit my company? Architecture of a Web Service Consuming Web Services Publishing Web Services 3 rd Party Tools Resources Questions Copyright 1/23/2014 BMC Software, Inc 2

3 What is a Web Service? Web Services are web-based application components stored on an a server providing certain functionality or data available on the publisher system to external 3rd party products. The function of a Web Service itself, is to integrate web-based applications by using standards such as XML, SOAP, WSDL and UDDI. XML: Is used to "tag" the data SOAP: Is used to transfer the data WSDL: Is used for describing the available services UDDI: Lists the services available Compared to other web models, Web Services do not provide users with a GUI (Graphical User Interface). All the data shared through Web Services goes to another application interface, not the users. Developers can add a separate source to offer functionality for data coming from Web Services to their end Users. Copyright 1/23/2014 BMC Software, Inc 3

4 How does this feature benefit my company? On a demanding world, Web Services simplifies the time consuming task of writing code to allow different sources of data to communicate each other. Since all the communication is in XML format, Web Services are not tied to specific languages nor operating systems. Java can talk with Perl, and Windows Applications can talk with Unix Applications. Data from Remedy can be published to other applications that do not interact natively with Remedy products. Eg.: you could provide your own portal with all the tickets open, marked as Critical, without having to log to the Remedy platform (Web Services does all the work without user interaction). At the same time, your application could serve your own data to Remedy Systems. Using Web Services has no extra cost. Your AR Server is ready to work with them, out-of-the-box. Copyright 1/23/2014 BMC Software, Inc 4

5 Architecture of a Web Service Consuming a Web Service: Publishing a Web Service: Consuming or publishing Web Services is transparent to End Users Mid-Tier is used as a publisher (container) of AR Server Web Services The Web Services plugin is an Axis client running through the AR Plugin Server to make outgoing consumption calls. Copyright 1/23/2014 BMC Software, Inc 5

Consuming Web Services Consuming Web Services and example: Find the external WSDL (Web Service Description Language) and make sure it works (you can use 3 rd party products to check its health) On

6 Consuming Web Services Consuming Web Services and example: Find the external WSDL (Web Service Description Language) and make sure it works (you can use 3 rd party products to check its health) On this test, we re going to use a Quote of the Day WSDL: Create a form containing the fields you want to use (map) on Remedy: Copyright 1/23/2014 BMC Software, Inc 6

Consuming Web Services Create a new Filter with a Set Fields action reading the values from Web Service by typing the URL of your external Web Service (WSDL)

7 Consuming Web Services Create a new Filter with a Set Fields action reading the values from Web Service by typing the URL of your external Web Service (WSDL) and selecting the form saved earlier: In this example, we re going to use the following Execute Options: Modify Submit Copyright 1/23/2014 BMC Software, Inc 7

Consuming Web Services Chose the Port and Operation populated by the Web Service: Set the Output map between your form and the external Web Service for the fields you

8 Consuming Web Services Chose the Port and Operation populated by the Web Service: Set the Output map between your form and the external Web Service for the fields you want to use (Note that we re mapping the fields from the form we ve created earlier and it uses the Database name, not the label) Copyright 1/23/2014 BMC Software, Inc 8

9 Consuming Web Services Test the Web Service on User Tool or Mid-Tier, based on the operations selected above. Our example uses the Submit execution so it will populate the content upon saving the record: Open the form in New Mode: And populate the required (bold) fields (Status, Short Description and Submitter). Do not fill the custom fields you ve created, since they will be populated by the Web Service call automatically. Save the changes. Copyright 1/23/2014 BMC Software, Inc 9

10 Consuming Web Services Open the form in Search Mode and select your record: As seen on the above picture, the web service provide a random Quote of the Day and it was populated to the mapped field in the record. Copyright 1/23/2014 BMC Software, Inc 10

11 Publishing Web Services Publishing Web Services and example: Find the internal WSDL you want to use. Since we use Mid-Tier as a container for WSDLs, they can be found under: On this test, we re going to re-use our own Quote of the Day form created earlier to publish back the saved quotes to 3 rd party applications. Since our form has no WSDL yet, we re going to create one. Create a new Web Service aiming our form: Copyright 1/23/2014 BMC Software, Inc 11

Mapping, remove unneeded fields, leaving just what we want

12 Publishing Web Services Name the Port as you like, and add a new Get Operation with a friendly name: From the Output Mapping, remove unneeded fields, leaving just what we want to show in our WSDL: Copyright 1/23/2014 BMC Software, Inc 12

13 Publishing Web Services Give the Web Service Public permissions and save it with a new name: Upon saving, the WSDL name will update. You will need to substitute the proper aliases of your webserver, including port and instance name in the WSDL URL: Wrong: Right: Copyright 1/23/2014 BMC Software, Inc 13

14 Publishing Web Services The final result should look like this: IMPORTANT: If you ever decide to modify a Web Service make sure to Flush Mid-Tier s cache. Simple flush is enough. Copyright 1/23/2014 BMC Software, Inc 14

3 rd Party Products (and tests) 3 rd Party Products are those non-remedy tools or applications that you can use to test or integrate with the Remedy

There are many applications that you may find useful, such as text editors with XML syntax checking, or applications that can act as Web Service

15 3 rd Party Products (and tests) 3 rd Party Products are those non-remedy tools or applications that you can use to test or integrate with the Remedy platform. There are many applications that you may find useful, such as text editors with XML syntax checking, or applications that can act as Web Service consumers, such as SOAP-UI. On this test we re going to use SOAP-UI to consume the Web Service we ve created on the Publishing section earlier: Open SOAP-UI and create a new project, and paste our (Internal) Web Service URL (make sure to create Sample requests): Copyright 1/23/2014 BMC Software, Inc 15

from the list, then populate the User name and password.

16 3 rd Party Products (and tests) Our Get operation created earlier will be listed. Double click Request 1 and remove all question marks? from the list, then populate the User name and password. Include the request number taken from our new record with the quote obtained earlier: Copyright 1/23/2014 BMC Software, Inc 16

3 rd Party Products (and tests) If the WSDL is working properly, upon clicking Play (green arrow button) you should be able to retrieve the data stored in Remedy:

17 3 rd Party Products (and tests) If the WSDL is working properly, upon clicking Play (green arrow button) you should be able to retrieve the data stored in Remedy: <ns0:submitter>demo</ns0:submitter> <ns0:ws_quoteoftheday>by and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.</ns0:ws_quoteoftheday> <ns0:ws_author>george Carlin</ns0:WS_Author> Copyright 1/23/2014 BMC Software, Inc 17

18 Resources BMC Resources: Web Services Best Practices: Primer on Publishing WS: Using BMC ITSM OOB WS: BMC 8.1 Documentation PDF (Integration Guide): External Resources: XML Validator (W3Schools): Web Services Glossary: WebInject (Workload Graphs/Monitor/Validator): Soap-UI: Eclipse Tools (Includes a good XML editor): Copyright 1/23/2014 BMC Software, Inc 18

19 Questions? Copyright 1/23/2014 BMC Software, Inc 19

20 For Any Questions/Concerns, You can Get in Touch with Us! OnDemand Communities site: This webinar s discussion thread: Contacts: Gonzalo de Salterain (gonzalo_salterain@bmc.com) Gary Reif (gary_reif@bmc.com) Copyright 1/23/2014 BMC Software, Inc 20

Using BMC SRM OOB Web Services

Using BMC SRM OOB Web Services The BMC Service Request Management application is shipped with a number of OOB Web Services that can be used to Create, Query and Modify requests (see Figure 1. at end of