Web service provider scenario

SOAP Gateway enables IMS applications as web service providers that receive inbound requests from external client applications. This scenario is called the web service provider scenario.

The following figure shows the SOAP Gateway runtime environment when IMS applications are enabled as web service providers and receive inbound requests from client applications. The numbers in the figure correspond to the descriptions that follow.

Figure 1. SOAP Gateway runtime environment for the IMS applications as web service providers scenario
Overview of the SOAP Gateway runtime environment when IMS applications act as web service providers.
  1. The web service client application sends a SOAP message to SOAP Gateway that contains input to the IMS application in an XML format.
  2. SOAP Gateway processes the SOAP header (XML) and retrieves the appropriate correlation and connection information for the input request.
  3. SOAP Gateway sends the input XML data to IMS Connect by using TCP/IP after adding the appropriate IMS Connect header.
  4. IMS Connect calls its XML adapter, which in turn calls the XML converter to transform the XML to IMS application format.
  5. IMS Connect sends the message for further processing. From this point on, the processing is the same as a normal transaction flow. The transaction is executed and the output is queued.
  6. IMS Connect calls the XML adapter to transform the IMS application format to XML.
  7. IMS Connect sends the output XML message back to SOAP Gateway by using TCP/IP.
  8. SOAP Gateway wraps a SOAP header on the output message.
  9. SOAP Gateway sends the output message back to the client application.

If you handle the data transformation in your application without using the IMS Connect XML adapter, you do not need to invoke the XML adapter. In this case, the incoming XML message is sent directly to IMS Connect and then to the IMS application. The IMS application creates an XML output message that is sent to IMS Connect, then directly to SOAP Gateway, and lastly to the web service client.