Oracle^® Business Intelligence Web Services Guide > Overview of Oracle BI Web Services >

What is Oracle BI Web Services?

Oracle BI Web Services is an application programming interface (API) that implements SOAP. Oracle BI Web Services allows you to perform three types of function:

• Extract results from Oracle BI Presentation Services and deliver them to external applications.
• Perform Oracle BI Presentation Catalog management functions.
• Execute Oracle Business Intelligence alerts (known as iBots).

Oracle BI Web Services allows external applications such as J2EE and .NET to use Oracle Business Intelligence as an analytical calculation and data integration engine. It provides a set of Presentation Services that allow external applications to communicate with Oracle BI Presentation Services. You can use Oracle BI Web Services to extract results from Oracle BI Presentation Services and deliver them to external applications and Web application environments. You can reference a saved report or send the criteria for the report to Oracle BI Web Services.

The formal definition of services and methods in Oracle BI Web Services can be retrieved in WSDL (Web Services Definition Language) format. Proxy classes for the services can be generated automatically.

The XML Schema Definition (XSD) file for the services is the file SawServices.xsd, which is located in the \Web\App\Res\Wsdl\Schemas directory in the Oracle Business Intelligence Platform installation directory. The XSD file is used internally and cannot be used separately. You can access the WSDL document at the following Oracle BI Web Services URL:

http://<somehost>/analytics/saw.dll?WSDL

Oracle BI Web Services is supported on Oracle JDeveloper, Apache Axis, and the Microsoft .NET framework.

For more information about the SOAP recommendation, consult a reference such as the Microsoft Developer Network or the W3C Web site.