service-name   Web service names can be any sequence of alphanumeric characters or slash (/), hyphen (-), underscore (_), period (.), exclamation mark (!), tilde (~), asterisk (*), apostrophe ('), left parenthesis ((), or right parenthesis ()), except that the service name must not begin or end with a slash (/) or contain two or more consecutive slashes (for example, //).

Unlike other services, you cannot use a slash (/) anywhere in a DISH service name.

You can name your service root, but this name has a special function.

TYPE clause   Identifies the type of the service where each service defines a specific response format. The type must be one of the listed service types. There is no default value.

GROUP clause   A DISH service without a GROUP clause exposes all SOAP services defined within the database. By convention, the SOAP service name can be composed of a GROUP and a NAME element. The name is delimited from the group by the last slash character. For example, a SOAP service name defined as 'aaa/bbb/ccc' is 'ccc', and the group is 'aaa/bbb'. Delimiting a DISH service using this convention is invalid. Instead, a GROUP clause is applied to specify the group of SOAP services for which it is to be the SOAP endpoint.

DATATYPE clause   Applies to SOAP services only. When DATATYPE OFF is specified, SOAP input parameters and response data are defined as XMLSchema string types. In most cases, true data types are preferred because it negates the need for the SOAP client to cast the data prior to computation. Parameter data types are exposed in the schema section of the WSDL generated by the DISH service. Output data types are represented as XML schema type attributes for each column of data.

The following values are permitted for the DATATYPE clause:

For more information about SOAP services, see Tutorial: Using SQL Anywhere to access a SOAP/DISH service.

For more information about mapping XMLSchema types to SQL data types, see SOAP data types.

FORMAT clause   This clause specifies the output format when sending responses to SOAP client applications.

The SOAP service format is dictated by the associated DISH service format specification when it is not specified by the SOAP service. The default format is DNET.

SOAP requests should be directed to the DISH service (the SQL Anywhere SOAP endpoint) to leverage common formatting rules for a group of SOAP services (SOAP operations). A SOAP service FORMAT specification overrides that of a DISH service. The format specification of the DISH service is used when a SOAP service does not define a FORMAT clause. If no FORMAT is provided by either service then the default is 'DNET'.

The following formats are supported:

AUTHORIZATION clause   Determines whether users must specify a user name and password through basic HTTP authorization when connecting to the service. The default value is ON. If authorization is OFF, the AS clause is required for SOAP services, and a user must be specified with the USER clause. All requests are run using that user's account and privileges. If AUTHORIZATION is ON, all users must provide a user name and password. Optionally, you can limit the users that are permitted to use the service by providing a user or group name with the USER clause. If the user name is NULL, all known users can access the service. The AUTHORIZATION clause allows your web services to use database authorization and privileges to control access to the data in your database.

When the authorization value is ON, an HTTP client connecting to a web service uses basic authentication (RFC 2617) which obfuscates the user and password information using base-64 encoding. It is recommended that you use the HTTPS protocol for increased security.

ENABLE and DISABLE clauses   Determines whether the service is available for use. By default, when a service is created, it is enabled. When creating or altering a service, you may include an ENABLE or DISABLE clause. Disabling a service effectively takes the service off line. Later, it can be enabled using ALTER SERVICE with the ENABLE clause. An HTTP request made to a disabled service typically returns a 404 Not Found HTTP status.

METHODS clause   Specifies the HTTP methods that are supported by the service. Valid values are DEFAULT, POST, GET, HEAD, and NONE. An asterisk (*) may be used as a short form to represent the POST, GET, and HEAD methods. The default method types for SOAP services are POST and HEAD. The default method types for DISH services are GET, POST, and HEAD. Not all HTTP methods are valid for all the service types. The following table summarizes the valid HTTP methods that can be applied to each service type:

For example, you can use the following clause to specify that a service supports all SOAP over HTTP method types:

METHODS 'POST,HEAD'

To reset the list of request types for any service type to its default, you can use the following clause:

METHODS 'DEFAULT'

SECURE clause   Specifies whether the service should be accessible on a secure or non-secure listener. ON indicates that only HTTPS connections are accepted, and that connections received on the HTTP port are automatically redirected to the HTTPS port. OFF indicates that both HTTP and HTTPS connections are accepted, provided that the necessary ports are specified when starting the web server. The default value is OFF.

USER clause   Specifies a database user, or group of users, with privileges to execute the web service request. A USER clause must be specified when the service is configured with AUTHORIZATION OFF and should be specified with AUTHORIZATION ON (the default). An HTTP request made to a service requiring authorization results in a 401 Authorization Required HTTP response status. Based on this response, the web browser prompts for a user ID and password.

The USER clause controls which database user accounts can be used to process service requests. Database access permissions are restricted to the privileges assigned to the user of the service.

statement   Specifies a command, such as a stored procedure call, to invoke when the service is accessed.

A DISH service is the only service that must either define a null statement, or not define a statement. A SOAP service must define a statement. Any other SERVICE can have a NULL statement, but only if it is configured with AUTHORIZATION ON.

An HTTP request to a non-DISH service with no statement specifies the SQL expression to execute within its URL. Although authorization is required, this capability should not be used in production systems because it makes the server vulnerable to SQL injections. When a statement is defined within the service, the specified SQL statement is the only statement that can be executed through the service.

In a typical web service application, you use statement to call a function or procedure. You can pass host variables as parameters to access client-supplied HTTP variables.

The following statement demonstrates a procedure call that passes two host variables to a procedure named AuthenticateUser. This call presumes that a web client supplies the user_name and user_password variables:

CALL AuthenticateUser ( :user_name, :user_password );

For more information about passing host variables to a function or procedure, see How to access client-supplied HTTP variables and headers.