Show TOC

Simplifying ServicesLocate this document in the navigation structure

Use

You can use the Service Composer perspective to simplify existing back-end services.

Many service interfaces that you use in your daily work are large, complicated and provide too much information. You may actually need only pieces of the information provided by the service interface. The other service operations from the service interface might not be of interest at all. Using the Service Composer perspective you can reduce the complexity of existing service interfaces. The perspective provides you with a simplification wizard which allows you to:

  • Reduce the number of types and elements in a service interface.

  • Modify the types and the elements of the service interface. Note that in the simplification wizard, the complex types and elements are referred to as structure types , while simple types and elements are referred to as simple types .

  • Rename service operations.

  • Modify the attributes of a service operation

  • Remove service operations that you do not need.

  • Define data mappings between the original service interface and the simplified service.

  • In the end, as a result of the simplification process, the wizard generates a composed service. This composed service consumes the services defined by the back-end service interface. At the same time this composed service hides the complexity and unwanted details from the back-end service.

Procedure

Starting the Simplification Wizard

Note

You can start the simplification process from the Composite Designer perspective too.

To start the simplification process from the Service Composer perspective:

  1. Open the Service Composer perspective in the Developer Studio.

    From the menu path, choose Start of the navigation path Window Next navigation step Open Perspective Next navigation step Other... End of the navigation path. In the dialog that appears, choose the Service Composer perspective.

  2. Create a new Service Composer DC.

    From the menu path, choose Start of the navigation path File Next navigation step New Next navigation step Project End of the navigation path. In the dialog that appears, navigate to Start of the navigation path Service Composer Next navigation step Service Composer Development Component End of the navigation path.

    Choose Next .

  3. Open the development configuration and select the software component in which you want to create the new DC. Choose Next .

  4. Specify the required data for the new DC. Choose Finish .

    For more information about the DC's data, see Creating Development Components .

  5. In the Project Explorer view, navigate to Start of the navigation path Service Composition Next navigation step Composed Services End of the navigation path and open the context menu. Choose New Simplified Service...

    The simplification wizard is started.

  6. Generate, build and deploy. For more information, see Generating the Composed Service .

Simplifying the Service

  1. Choose the location of the back-end service that needs to be simplified. Choose Next .

  2. If required, specify the connection credentials. Select the service that you want to be simplified. Choose Next .

    The service operations are displayed.

  3. Select the service operation that you want to exclude from the service. Choose the Delete attribute icon.

    To undo a deletion or change you made to an attribute, choose the Undo last command icon (or use CTRL+Z ). To redo a change you made, you can use CTRL+Y .

    Note

    You can use multiple selection using the CTRL+A combination, or select several attributes for deletion using CTRL+Click .

  4. For each service operation, you can modify the properties of its attributes. For example, you can rename an attribute of the service operation, or change the attribute's data type.

    Note that once you complete the simplification wizard, the mappings of the data between the complex WSDL and the new simplified WSDL can be automatically created.

    Note

    You can create linear lists of simple elements for attributes, which are list of lists. To do that, open the context menu of the list and choose Flatten Structure . The attribute's type is changed to <attribute's type name>_flat .

    When ready with the deletion of service operations or their attributes, choose Next .

  5. Specify the WSDL namespace and the Schema namespace to be used upon saving the simplified WSDL file. You can also change the name of the simplified WSDL file.

  6. If you want to use the old namespace for the unchanged types, and put only the changed service operations in a new namespace, select the Keep original namespace for unmodified types checkbox.

  7. To delete the data types that are not used anywhere in the simplified WSDL file, select the Remove unused types checkbox.

    Choose Next .

  8. Unmark the service operations for which you do not want to have implementations. When ready choose Finish .

Note

Note that when you create new simplified services, if you try to simplify the same service interface twice, you may fall into a situation in which you have two different simplified services with the same service name. When you try to deploy them to the same AS Java server, the deployment will fail because you cannot have WSDLs with the same service names on the same server. To solve this issue, you have to open the WSDL editor and change the service name.

More Information