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Table Of Contents
Developing a Web Services Client 8
VMware vCenter Orchestrator provides a Web services API so that you can develop applications to access
workflows through Web services. The main purpose of the Orchestrator Web service is to start workflows and
to retrieve their output parameters through a network or the Web.
The Web service API provides a set of Web service definition language (WSDL) object type definitions and a
set of Web service operations, that obtain workflows, run workflows, refresh workflow states, and obtain their
output parameter values. The Web service API also allows you to implement tree viewers, based on the
relations between objects obtained from plug-ins. The API has few complex object types and relatively few
operations.
NOTE To help understand how Orchestrator implements Web services, familiarize yourself with the Web
services API for your development framework, for example Java or .Net.
This chapter includes the following topics:
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“Writing a Web Service Client Application,” on page 247
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“Web Service API Object Reference,” on page 262
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“Web Service API Operation Reference,” on page 267
Writing a Web Service Client Application
Most applications that use the Orchestrator Web Service API have a common structure. To create Orchestrator
Web service client applications, you perform a standard sequence of tasks.
Process for Creating an Orchestrator Web Service Client Application
Developing a Web services client application follows a broad sequence of stages.
Figure 8-1 shows how to create a typical Orchestrator Web service client application.
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