Using Generated Web Services

What Are Generated Web Services?

Starting with SAS 9.2, 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 File (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 with an XMLA Web service.

Having all the type information in the WSDL is better suited to most client applications, and also makes things simpler for the developer. Making the WSDL more specific to the actual parameters instead of having a generic interface enables you to simplify the request XML. Making the WSDL more specific also makes the Web service more easily consumed by standard Web service client applications such as BizTalk, InfoPath, Word, SharePoint, Excel, AJAX, and WebSphere.

Generated Web services also support attachments. Attachments enable you to send non-XML (binary) data with a SOAP request or response. Most stored processes generate binary output (because they create reports that contain HTML and GIF images). MTOM is currently supported by .NET and the Apache Axis2 Web Service stack.

Note: If you are using SAS BI Web Services for .NET, attachments have a content-type of application/octet-stream. The actual content-type of the attachment is specified in the SOAP body. [cautionend]

For information about the basic steps for using generated Web services, see Use Generated Web Services.

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