Web Services Guide

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REST and SOAP Web Service Differences

You can create REST or SOAP web services in the Informatica Developer tool.

REST and SOAP web services have the following differences:

Request message format: SOAP messages are structured XML. A SOAP web service parses the XML to determine the operation that the web service must perform. The REST request is a simple URI string that contains a query.

Response message format: A SOAP web service returns a response in an XML format as defined by a WSDL.
An Informatica REST web service returns JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) or XML response messages. The response message format is not defined by a WSDL or schema. You define the output format when you define the Informatica REST web service.

Web service mapping format: An Informatica SOAP web service contains an operation mapping. A SOAP operation mapping contains an Input transformation that parses the XML from a request message. You must add transformations to the web service mapping process the data as required by the client request.; An Informatica REST web service contains a resource mapping. The resource mapping does not read the request query. The REST resource mapping contains a Read transformation instead of an Input transformation. The Read transformation reads a data object in the Model repository to retrieve data to return to the client. By default, you do not have to add a Filter transformation or a Lookup transformation to retrieve the data based on the client query. The REST web service filters the output data after the mapping returns data.