Basic operations in WSDL files

Each Web Service that ITSMA Service Management publishes has a set of valid operations that an administrator can enable or disable for custom Web Services clients. The list of valid Web Service operations comes from two sources:

• The Document Engine display actions defined for each Service Management table
• The common operations available to all Web Services

The <Operation Name> is the alias name of the Service Management display option as defined in the Web Services Configuration Utility. The <Object Name> is the alias name of the Service Management table as published in the Web Service. Use a Request message to send SOAP operations to the Service Management server. The Service Management server uses a Response message to send its reply to the SOAP operation.

You can see the list of available Document Engine display actions for each table in the extaccess table. The Service Management server converts each published display action into a separate <operation> element in the Web Services Definition Language (WSDL).

For example, the Resolve operation for the Incident object translates to the ResolveIncidentRequest SOAP message. The Service Management server replies with a ResolveIncidentResponse SOAP message. Any custom Web Services client you create must be able to generate these SOAP message requests and understand the SOAP message response.

In addition to application-specific display actions, there are common operations available to all Service Management Web Services objects. Just as with display options, the Service Management server converts each common operation into a separate <operation> element in the Web Services Definition Language (WSDL). The following common messages are always available.

• Retrieve<Object>Request – retrieves a single record detail matching the value of the <keys> element or query attribute, for example an Incident record.
• Retrieve<Object>KeysList – retrieves a list of keys matching the value of query attribute.
• Retrieve<Object>List – retrieves a list of objects matching the value of query attribute.

The following common messages but are not always available.

• Update<Object>Request – updates a single record matching the value of the <keys> element or query attribute with the new values defined in the <instance> element 
• Delete<Object>Request * – deletes a single record matching the value of the <keys> element
• Create<Object>Request – adds a single record with the values defined in the <instance> element

* The IncidentManagement Web Service does not offer the delete operation. To retrieve a single incident record, you can use the RetrieveIncident operation.

For more information about Web Services and WSDL, see the W3C Web site.