Using Web Services

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ECGridOS is a Web Services API built on the Microsoft .NET Framework. It can be accessed through any system capable of making Web Services calls. Any programming language can be used that can make a HTTP or SOAP request.

What is a Web Service?

In a nutshell, Web Services are simply remote class library. It contains properties and methods just like any other class. There are also a set of classes to define various return Objects and ENUMs to assist in building function calls. It really is very simple.

Attaching to the ECGridOS Web Services

Given the confidential nature of electronic commerce, ECGridOS can only be accessed securely over HTTPS.

ECGridOS can be accessed through HTTP, POST endpoints allow for application/x-www-form-urlencoded content type to be sent.

You will need an API-Key or Session ID to access all methods except for NowUTC() and Version(), which can be used as a quick test.

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Programming Philosophy

The basic philosophy of using ECGridOS is by discrete session. Which at the highest level consists of the following steps

• get client
• call method() - authenticate with API-Key/Session ID
• close client

Data returned from the APIs can be single values, datasets, objects or collections of objects (returned as arrays).

When returning datasets and collections of objects, keep in mind that the entire response is returned at once, as no cursors are created as with a SQL server. Discretion should be used to not create a request that generates excessively large responses as this will significantly affect performance and local memory requirements.

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