Rational Portfolio Manager (RPM) Release 6.2 introduces Web Services as the preferred technology to allow integration between external applications and RPM. This technology enables customers, to automatically interconnect their databases to the RPM database and to perform initial loading of the RPM repository. Therefore, this technology bypasses the time consuming, costly, and error-prone process of having resources manually import data using the RPM Client.
A Web Services API (Application Programming Interface) is made available to provide programmatic access to the RPM database. With this API, customers can develop direct access to the RPM database information in order to create, an unlimited array of new integration possibilities using programming languages, such as Java, C++, or C#. The RPM Web Services API also enables customers and third-party integrators alike to build custom integration client applications, tools, and services that leverage the RPM application in new ways. The power of the RPM Web Services API lies in making client applications independent of the RPM user interface. That is, a custom client application does not need to change every time the RPM user interface changes, and avoids the need to present data in the same way as RPM. An RPM-enabled application can customize data to best meet the users’ needs.
Web Services technology provides a standards-based foundation that enables independent evolution and upgrades of both the customer’s application and of RPM. In most cases, the applications can be changed without the need to modify the API. Conversely, the API can be enhanced without the need to change the end-user applications, only the integration client application
Inside the integration client application, the RPM Web Services interface is an object in the application's native programming language. A SOAP client is used to generate business-object interfaces and network stubs from a WSDL document that specifies the RPM message schema, the service address, and other interface information. The integration client application works with data in the form of object properties, and it sends and receives the data by calling object methods. The SOAP client handles the details of building the SOAP request and sending it to RPM, and converting the response back to an object that is easy to work with. This avoids developers, the need to build and parse XML documents themselves, allowing them to focus on managing and presenting the data itself. By simplifying the way the end-user applications access RPM data, the Web Services API supports customers in getting applications up and running and to adapt to change at a faster pace.
The API is built on open standards such as SOAP and WSDL. These standards are supported by a wide-range of development tools on a variety of platforms.
The RPM Web Services API is broken into logical modules, where each module is defined by an individual WSDL document. Each module’s WSDL document defines the interface for the methods that can be called for that module as well as a description of the types of data objects that will be returned. This guide is intended to provide a general overview of the functionalities that are offered by each module of the API.
The following diagram presents an overview of the RPM Web Services API and its components.
The RPM Web Services API can be used to perform tasks such as the following:
Examples of practical operations on the RPM database include:
For each operation, client applications submit a request to the RPM Web Services, await the Web Services’ response, and processes the results. The RPM Web Services commit any changed data automatically
The RPM Web Services API is implemented to comply with the following Web Services standards:
RPM Web Services are based on J2EE Web Services provided by WebSphere.
RPM Web Services connections are supported over both HTTP and HTTPS protocols.