The NWBC runtime provides three different sets of HTTP REST APIs. For external usage, the ATOM APIs are recommended. They provide a high-level export of all roles with entry points to start any of these roles within an NWBC shell that can be embedded in a foreign environment. Typical use case would be to consume all roles for a specific user and make them available in another type of “portal”. For more information, see 6.5.1 ATOM Based APIs.

The other APIs are mainly used internally. One set of APIs are used by NWBC for Desktop to interact at a fine granular level with the NWBC runtime (see section 6.5.2 APIs to Export Detailed Information), the second set similarly used by SAP Enterprise Portal (see section 6.5.3 APIs to Export Content to SAP Enterprise Portal) to retrieve role information from the NWBC runtime.