Programming interfaces

REST interface

The representational state transfer (REST) interface is a lightweight interface that use HTTP requests to communicate with the IBM® Cognos® Analytics server. This interface requires the consuming application to understand the response and has a low overhead when dealing with large amounts of data.

Mashup Service REST requests use the following syntax:

For example, the following request retrieves the output for the report with storeID icb01bd1241024cc5bf2086fb10cb40d2 in LDX format:

SOAP interface

The simple object access protocol (SOAP) interface provides an interface in which SOAP messages are used to pass requests and responses between the client application and the IBM Cognos Analytics server. This interface provides an object-oriented model that is easily integrated into Java™^TM or .NET applications. The SOAP interface has an overhead cost that makes it unsuitable for applications that work with large amounts of data. Use of the SOAP interface requires the use of a toolkit that can consume "document/literal" WSDL files and create methods and classes, such as the Eclipse IDE or Microsoft Visual Studio.

You can use the SOAP interface to create generic applications that work with any report or report-specific applications that use a simplified "per-report" WSDL file that makes writing an application to work with a specific report easier. To create a SOAP application that works with any report, import the generic WSDL file into your toolkit using the following URL: