PAPI Web Service is an independent web application built on top of PAPI. This application exposes a
subset of PAPI functionality using SOAP over HTTP.
Using PAPI Web Service to communicate with the Engine has the following advantages over using PAPI:
- You can use it from any programming language that supports XML and HTTP.
- It does not need any external libraries on the client side.
- The application using PAPI Web Service does not need a connection to the Directory Server. This application
can run outside the domain where ALBPM is installed.
There are a few minor disadvantages:
- Performance overhead: PAPI Web Service is a layer on top of PAPI. The web services client communicates with
PAPI using XML. This adds a small overhead that makes PAPI Web Service slightly less performant than using
PAPI directly.
- Attachments functionality is not available.
- PAPI Web Service does not handle complex types. Only methods with primitive and/or catalogued XML
schema type arguments, and primitive return type can be invoked.