Confused about services

ckacoroski

Hi,

I am trying to understand exactly how services work. My first try was a URL service that I can call and get some results back from it. I checked out the library application, but it did not even through an error when paypal said I could not send money to myself and I clicked on paypal's return to merchant link.

Questions are:

Can I get data back from a URL service? If so, can you provide an example?
How does a process let the user know that there was a failure in a URL service?
Can you have a URL service that does not open another window, but just processes the data in the parameter list and returns a value (if that is possible).

Second try is a Socket service to a perl app and again I am confused. Do you have any examples of AwareIM talking to a simple socket program (e.g. a simple calculator program for example so AwareIM would have a parameter object of number1, number2, and operation and the result would be returned and put ????).

I feel like I am missing something fundamental here about how services are suppose to work. Appreciate the enlightenment.

BTW: I need this because my app needs to create directories and set passwords in various directory services (which cannot be done via the LDAP external database access). As part of this, I have to have immediate feedback if the directory was created or password reset successfully.

Thanks for your help.

ski

aware_support

Data from any service is returned as a notification. For the URL channel you need to define this notification manually. This is because data from the web site you are calling is returned as that web site calling Aware IM's success URL with some parameters. Aware IM then creates a notification and assumes that it has attributes with the names equal to the parameter names being passed by the web site.
For SOAP channel type Aware IM creates these notification automatically from the WSDL file.
Again this is specific to a particular channel. For the URL channel the failure info is only handled by Aware IM if the web site you are calling has the capability to do so. This capability can be achieved in two ways:
a) The web site can call a special "failure" URL - you provide the name of the parameter that holds this URL in the settings of the URL channel
b) The web site provides info about the failure in some of its return parameters. In this case you need to define a notification that will include these parameters and define rules that will check attribute values of the notification after the service call and then abort the process by REPORT ERROR
URL channel is useful if the URL you want to call activates its own user interface - for example, PayPal opens its own pages and then returns to Aware IM. If the service does not involve any UI then you can use web services or URL_CONTENTS function.

If you want any specific help on this please purchase a support ticket or send an e-mail to support@awareim.com with the details of what specifically you want to achieve.