HTTP and SOAP request structures

All parameters to a function or procedure, unless used during parameter substitution, are passed as part of the web service request. The format in which they are passed depends on the type of the web service request.

Parameter values that are not of character or binary data types are converted to a string representation before being added to the request. This process is equivalent to casting the value to a character type. The conversion is done in accordance with the data type formatting option settings at the time the function or procedure is invoked. In particular, the conversion can be affected by such options as precision, scale, and timestamp_format.

HTTP request structures

Parameters for type HTTP:GET are URL encoded and placed within the URL. Parameter names are used verbatim as the name for HTTP variables. For example, the following procedure declares two parameters:

CREATE PROCEDURE test(a INTEGER, b CHAR(128))
    URL 'HTTP://localhost/myservice'
    TYPE 'HTTP:GET';

If this procedure is invoked with the two values 123 and 'xyz', then the URL used for the request is equivalent to that shown below:

HTTP://localhost/myservice?a=123&b=xyz

If the type is HTTP:POST, the parameters and their values are URL encoded and placed within the body of the request. After the headers, the following text appears in the body of the HTTP request for the two parameter and values:

a=123&b=xyz

SOAP request structures

Parameters passed to SOAP requests are bundled as part of the request body, as required by the SOAP specification:

<SOAP-ENV:Envelope
  xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
  xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xmlns:m="http://localhost:8082">
  <SOAP-ENV:Body>
    <m:test>
      <m:a>123</m:a>
      <m:b>abc</m:b>
    </m:test>
  </SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>