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Data conversion between Service Manager and SOAP Web Services

HPE Service Manager has a more lenient data typing policy than the XML schema data typing policy used for Web Services. Certain field types in Service Manager can correspond to multiple data types in the XML schema data type policy. For example, the Service Manager data type decimal could be a decimal, a floating number, or an integer in the XML schema data type policy.

In addition, the actual formatting of data varies between Service Manager and XML schema data types. This is especially true of Service Manager date/time fields that use a different order than XML schema dates. Because some Web Services may require changes to field data format, you can now define the XML Schema data type you want Service Manager to convert the field's data to when you publish the field as part of a web service.

For outbound data, the Service Manager server automatically converts Service Manager data to the format you select in the data policy record for the Service Manager field. For inbound data, the Service Manager server automatically converts the XML schema data to the Service Manager field's listed data type format.

For example, the Service Manager Web Services API publishes the Service Manager field closed.time as ClosedTime in the IncidentManagement service. The Web Services API converts the outbound Service Manager data into the appropriate ISO 8601 date format for XML schema. When the Web Service responds, the Web Service API converts the ISO-formatted date back into a Service Manager date format. Here is an example: the conversion between 1994-11-05T08:15:30-05:00 and November 5, 1994, 8:15:30 am, US Eastern Standard Time by the Web Services API.

The services, objects, and fields published in the Service Manager Web Services API already have the proper XML schema data mappings listed in the Web Services definition (extaccess record). If the extaccess record does not list a data type mapping, then the Web Services API treats the field data as a string field. Typically, you only need to add or change a Web Services API data type mapping to publish custom fields you have added to Service Manager as Web Services objects.

Caution Changing the Web Services API data type mappings for existing fields in the Service Manager Web Services API may result in data mismatch errors.