JSON web service restrictions

Use this reference material to understand capabilities that are not supported by JSON web services.

The following capabilities are not supported:
  • Requester mode pipelines with JSON are not supported.
  • Runtime validation of JSON data against schema is not supported. The value of the VALIDATION attribute of a WEBSERVICE resource that is used with a JSON payload is ignored.
  • Use of namespaces in JSON data (Badgerfish or Mapped conventions) is not supported.
  • JSON payloads sent to CICS® must be encoded in UTF-8. No other encoding is supported. Similarly, JSON sent by CICS is always encoded in UTF-8.
  • WebSphere® MQ transports with JSON pipelines are not supported.
  • Vendor transformer programs are not supported for use with the JSON transformer.
  • Reuse of WSBind files that are created for SOAP web services applications in a JSON pipeline is not supported. WSBind files for use with JSON service provider applications must be generated by the JSON assistant.
  • If a JSON payload is missing some mandatory content when CICS transforms it, the equivalent fields within the data structures are not initialized when passed to the application program.
  • CICS cannot transform integer values greater than the maximum value for a signed long (2^63 - 1) unless they are enclosed within quotation marks.
  • Use of simple data types is not supported at the root of a JSON schema. The JSON schema describes a JSON object or a JSON array, although the JSON object can in turn, contain simple data types, arrays, and other objects.
  • If an array is declared in a JSON schema with a maxItems value of 1, CICS serializes the array as a simple string or integer when it generates JSON at run time.
Important: The only supported characters for JSON property names are: A-Z a-z _ : for the first character and A-Z a-z 0-9 _ : . - for all subsequent characters.
The Axis2 web services support today has a number of options for development and deployment of applications and customizations. The following options are not supported:
  • User-supplied application handlers - you must use the CICS supplied application handler class com.ibm.cicsts.axis2.CICSAxis2ApplicationHandler.
  • User-written Axis2 Java™ applications.
  • The SOAPFAULT and WS-Addressing APIs cannot be used with the JSON pipeline.

Container restrictions

Note: Some pipeline containers are not populated when a JSON request is processed. For more information, see Containers used in the pipeline.

Differences in RESTful web services

On INQUIRE PIPELINE:
  • SOAPLEVEL returns NOTSOAP
  • The MTOMNOXOPST, MTOMST, SENDMTOMST, SOAPRNUM, SOAPVNUM, XOPDIRECTST, and XOPSUPPORTST attributes are not used.
On INQUIRE WEBSERVICE:
  • The ARCHIVEFILE, BINDING, VALIDATIONST, XOPDIRECTST, and XOPSUPPORTST attributes are not used.
  • WSDLFILE returns the name of the JSON schema file that is associated with the WEBSERVICE.
On the WEBSERVICE resource:
  • The ARCHIVEFILE and VALIDATION parameters are not used and their values are ignored.
  • WSDLFILE is the name of the JSON schema file that is associated with the WEBSERVICE.