Webservice entity (4ws)

Web services are a standard way of communicating between applications over an intranet or Internet. They define how to communicate between two entities: a server that exposes services and a client that consumes services.

A Webservice entity generates a web service with its CRUD operations, but with no accessible form. CRUD operations are used to Create, Read, Update, and Delete data from a database. I includes one global read operation that reads all records in once and one global create operation that creates all records at once.

A standalone Webservice entity is represented as a 4ws file which can be opened and edited in the Form Designer Records tab. When a Webservice entity is implemented from the diagram, the 4ws file is created as well as 4gl source files containing the program logic to create and set up a web service and its CRUD operations. Any changes to the Webservice entity properties in the BA diagram or in the 4ws file are included in the subsequent re-generating of the program code. The generated code can be customized.

See the topic Introduction to Web Services in the BDL User Guide for more information on Web Services concepts.

Table 1. Entity Properties
Property	Description
Name	Name of entity.
Type	Type of entity.
File Name	Full path to file.
Name	Unique publish-able service name.
Comment	Service comment that will appear in the wsdl file.

Right-click a Webservice entity in the diagram to display a context menu of options.

Table 2. Context Menu Options
Menu Option	Description
Implement Web Service	Creates a new blank managed web service definition file (4ws) to design from scratch.
Implement Web Service from Database	Provides a wizard to create a managed web service definition file (4ws), allowing you to pick the columns to use in the CRUD operations. This option is generally preferred. The web service can be modified after it is created.
Convert to	Converts entity from one type to another.
Locate in Project	Locates and highlights the selected item in the project.