Web Service Jobs

The term web service describes a standardized method for exchanging data between applications and systems. Web services use XML to code and decode the data and Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) to transfer it.

Web Service Description Language (WSDL) is an XML-based language that describes a web service and how to access it. A WSDL document specifies the location of the service and the operations the service exposes.

Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) is an XML-based registry for businesses to list their available web services on the Internet. You can use the UDDI to access the WSDL.

Web services provide access to applications written in Java and Microsoft^©.NET. A web service lets you invoke operations such as currency conversion, stock exchange quotes, or product pricing. In an enterprise workload automation environment, a web service might be used to invoke a business process such as posting accounts payable to the General Ledger. Some scheduling manager functions are also available as web services.

You can define a Web Service job to call an operation within a web service. The job passes parameters to the operation. The parameters can be actual values or a serialized Java object passed by another job. When the job invokes the web service, the parameters are passed to the operation. The job's output is stored by default as a serialized Java object in the job's spool directory. You can also specify a destination file for the output.

Note: To run these jobs, your system requires CA WA Agent for UNIX, Linux, or Windows and CA WA Agent for Web Services.

The following diagram shows the functional relationship between the scheduling manager, CA WA Agent for Web Services, and a web service residing on a web server:

This diagram shows the functional relationship between the scheduling manager, CA WA Agent for Web Services, and a web service residing on a web server.

Note: If your company has a firewall and you must communicate through a proxy server to access a computer outside the firewall, agent configuration is required. For more information on configuring the agent for a proxy, see the CA Workload Automation Agent for Web Services Implementation Guide.