General Interface applications are able to communicate with XML data services, such as SOAP, REST, or RSS, using the HTTP protocol. To simplify the exchange of information, General Interface provides an XML Mapping Utility that allows developers to visually bind nodes in the exchanged messages to objects in the application. The output from the XML Mapping Utility is an XML document format called the Common Exchange Format (CXF). CXF is analogous to XSLT in that it is an XML-based structure that is capable of transforming, creating, and processing XML documents. For information on General Interface document formats, see Custom Document Formats. CXF documents can also be used for internal transformations and mappings, making them useful even when a remote service isn't involved. The following figure depicts how CXF can be used to process and transform the messages exchanged with a remote service. The next figure shows how CXF can be used for internal mappings and transformations. Processing External Data Processing Internal Data Because CXF is used to define how information is processed, CXF documents are commonly referred to as rules files. The XML Mapping Utility is the design-time tool that creates a rules file, and the jsx3.net.Service class is the runtime engine that executes a rules file. If the rules file specifies that a remote service is involved, the jsx3.net.Service class manages all communications, using its own instance of jsx3.net.Request for the HTTP communications. |
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