Components of SAS Integration Technologies

SAS BI Web Services

SAS BI Web Services enable client applications to obtain metadata about and execute SAS Stored Processes by using the XML for Analysis (XMLA) Version 1.1 interface.

A Web service is an interface that enables communication between distributed applications. Web services provide cross-platform integration by enabling applications written in various programming languages to communicate by using a standard Web-based protocol. This functionality makes it possible for businesses to bridge the gaps between different applications and systems.

SAS Integration Technologies includes two implementations of SAS BI Web Services: a Java implementation, which requires a servlet container, and an implementation that uses the .NET framework. These implementations use the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) communication protocol.

Before SAS 9.2, you could write only XMLA Web services. Starting with SAS 9.2, you can use SAS Management Console to deploy a set of stored processes as a generated Web service.

With XMLA Web Services, two methods, Discover() and Execute(), are provided. The Discover method calls the SAS Metadata Server to obtain the requested metadata, and the Execute method calls the SAS Stored Process Server to invoke a stored process. Stored processes that are called by these methods must be registered on the SAS Metadata Server with XMLA Web Service as a keyword and Streaming as the output type. The output from a stored process that is called by a SAS BI Web Service is always an XML stream.

To create generated Web services, you can select a set of stored processes in SAS Management Console and deploy them to the Web Service Maker. The Web Service Maker generates a new Web service that contains one operation for each stored process that you selected. A new Web Service Description Language (WSDL) document is generated when you deploy the Web service. The generated WSDL document contains all the information that would be obtained if you were using the Discover method.

For detailed information about using SAS BI Web Services, including instructions for creating stored processes that Web services can access, see the SAS BI Web Services: Developer's Guide.

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