IBM BPM, V8.0.1, All platforms > Authoring services in Integration Designer > Services and service-related functions > Access external services with HTTP > HTTP data bindings

Overview of HTTP data bindings

A description of a data binding, how it differs from the HTTP binding presented earlier, the HTTP data format transformations available with the product and how to develop your own HTTP data format transformation is discussed.

The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a widely-used protocol for transferring information on the web. It has now become a standard request/response protocol between clients and server as defined by the HTTP protocol published by the World Wide Web consortium (W3C). The HTTP binding discussed earlier supports this protocol. Once you have decided to use HTTP, however, you also need to decide on the data format transformation you will use with it. The specific HTTP data format transformation chosen is the implementation of the HTTP binding.

The data format transformation takes an incoming stream of data in a native format and converts it to a business object to be used by services created with the service component architecture; for example, data from a Java™ application to a service created with the Integration Designer editors and wizards. The data format transformation can also take an outgoing stream of data in a business object and convert it to a native format.

The data format transformation can work with a data handler. In this case, the data format transformation delegates the transformation logic to a data handler. The data binding works as a mediator between the transport-dependent protocol, in this case, HTTP, and the transport-independent protocol of the data handler.

In this section, the prepackaged HTTP data format transformations that come with the product are shown. You are also shown how to develop your own data format transformation using a data handler.

HTTP data bindings


Related concepts:
Prepackaged HTTP data format transformations
Overview of HTTP function selectors
Prepackaged HTTP function selectors


Related reference:
Data handlers
Prepackaged HTTP fault selectors