Release 10.1A: OpenEdge Development:
Web Services

Open Client Toolkit and WSDL

To make an AppServer application accessible as a Web service, you use the OpenEdge Open Client Proxy Generator (ProxyGen), provided by the Open Client Toolkit to define the Web service interface for the application. To define the Web service, you follow the Open Client object model, much as you define proxies for other Open Clients. However, instead of generating an Open Client proxy for the Web service, you generate the Web service (client interface) definition in a WSM file used to deploy the Web service and an optional WSDL file for Web service client development (see the Web services development components architecture in OpenEdge Getting Started: Application and Integration Services ).

Thus, the Open Client interface definition that you specify and that ProxyGen generates includes at least one AppObject, zero or more SubAppObjects, and zero or more ProcObjects. These Web service object definitions, when processed using a Web service client platform, become the client interface objects that a client application accesses to interact with the Web service.

For more information on how the Open Client object model supports a Progress 4GL Web service definition and on how to define a Web service definition using ProxyGen, see OpenEdge Development: Open Client Introduction and Programming .

In addition to other Web service deployment information, ProxyGen allows you to specify the following basic features of a Web service interface:

SOAP format — OpenEdge supports the deployment of a Web service definition using any one of three SOAP formats. To support multiple client platforms, you might generate and deploy a Web service with multiple SOAP formats by generating a separate Web service definition for each format. Each separate WSDL definition identifies a unique Web service, even though the underlying AppServer application is the same. When you deploy the same Web service definition for multiple SOAP formats, you also must specify a unique target namespace for each one in order to deploy it to the same WSA instance. Otherwise, you must deploy the same Web service definition with different SOAP formats to different WSA instances.
Session model — This setting must match the session model supported by the AppServer application. The session model also determines the standard object management methods required for the Web service, and ProxyGen defines these methods according to the session model that you choose.

For more information on how a ProxyGen-generated Web service interface uses the Open Client object model, see Chapter 2, "WSDL and Web Service Objects in Progress 4GL Web Services," in this manual.