Updated tool improves support and communication with web services using SOAP and REST protocols
Codeless Platforms today announced the availability of Service Release 9 for its Web Service Connector Tool 1.0, which includes support for Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.2, the addition of a Supplementary Reference field, support for deep auto-linking, as well as a number of minor bug fixes.
The Web Service Connector tool allows BPA Platform to integrate with a wide number of commercial web services, making it possible to automate the passing of data requests and retrieval to and from websites that would normally be carried out manually.
It enables communication with a wide range of web services — both Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and Representational State Transfer (REST) protocols — and is capable of working with XML and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) formats, allowing users to post to and retrieve data from business applications.
The Web Service Connector can consume a recordset or an XML document. It can also map exposed web service parameters to the supplied data source. At task run-time, it is possible to use the BPA Platform Event Log to view the contents of the request and response payloads received with each web call.
The main features included in this release are:
- TLS 1.2 Support
For new web service connections, this is enabled by default. For existing web service connections, the user must switch their authentication to use Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.2 if required. A new field is present within the Authentication tab of created web services enabling/disabling use of TLS 1.2. This will eliminate the need for a machine-wide registry key setting which has been used as the previous workaround.
- Addition of Supplementary Reference
This new field is standard within our other integration tool packs and has now been added to the Web Service Connector. It enables values to be passed into and out of a call to a web service to allow any source values to be matched with output values where this relationship may not be apparent in the response data. Any value supplied to the Supplementary Reference field simply passes through from input to output – it is not included in the call to the web service.
- Support for Deep Auto-Linking
It is now possible to auto-map nodes and elements from the Tool Input tree to the Data Input tree (Mapping tab), where the schema and element names are the same — drag-and-drop the root element onto the other to automatically create the link through the schema.
This release of the Web Service Connector will require BPA Platform 2018 as a minimum product installation. This is connected to the use of .NET Framework 4.6 for the TLS changes. Users wishing to upgrade or install SR9 should ensure they have BPA Platform 2018 installed as a prerequisite.
The Web Service Connector Tool 1.0 Service Release 9 can be found here along with the white paper.
