PeopleSoft Simple Web Services (SWS)

Simple Web Service (SWS) is a PeopleSoft bolt-on that makes web services painless. You can go from idea to production web service in a few minutes.

PeopleSoft Web Services Are Hard

• Have you been struggling with PeopleSoft web services?
• Do PeopleSoft web services take too long to create?
• Is it hard to find technical staff that can create them?

The traditional method of developing web services in PeopleSoft can take weeks to months to develop a relatively simple web service because:

• You need a developer to get involved that has experience working with web services and understands the design constraints.
• There are the complexities of setup, code, migration, and security.
• Making iterative changes is time consuming and expensive.
• There are numerous undocumented bugs, limitations and outdated functionality to avoid.
• The Integration Broker documentation is not great.
  • See our Integration Broker - The Missing Manual Book for an alternative.

Don’t worry Cedar Hills Group, Inc has the solution for all these problems.

• SWS liberates you from that complexity and allows your organization to “free” the PeopleSoft data quickly.
• You provide the SQL and the SWS module handles all the other complexity.

What is SWS?

• The Simple Web Service (SWS) module is a small but powerful PeopleSoft bolt-on that makes creating REST web services very easy and fast.
• If you have a SQL statement, you can turn that into a REST web service in PeopleSoft in a few minutes.
• It enables you to quickly define new PeopleSoft web services with only configuration.
• There is no coding other than SQL. It supports CSV, JSON and XML output encoding automatically. SWS will make your team web service hero’s! 💪

SWS Features

• You define a new web service with only configuration in a few minutes.
• There are zero code migrations.
  • After the initial product install, there are zero code migrations for new web services.
  • Changes to web services are all done in the web browser.
• If you know how to write SQL, you can create a web service. You bring the SQL and SWS provides the web service.
• There is no need to write any PeopleCode or have any technical knowledge of Service Operations, Services, Messages, Handlers, etc.
• One configuration supports JSON, XML or CSV output encodings automatically.
• You can quickly decommission web services that are no longer needed with one check box.
• SWS generates a consistent output format so applications using the services can quickly experiment with and implement integrations without having to drastically re-implement data parsing logic for each new web service.

Product Documentation

All the user documentation is completely public so you know exactly what you are getting. This is NOT vaporware! 👍 😉

• User Documentation
• Installation Documentation
• Change Log

Limitations

In the current release of SWS, only “GET” web services are supported. These are web services that run SQL and export data out of PeopleSoft. Upon customer feedback, we will look to support inbound (POST/PUT) operations.

Product Road Map

• Version- 1 - Current Release
  • Support for Get REST Web Services
  • Support for CSV, JSON and XML output encodings.
  • Support for naming output columns
• Version - Future - Pending Customer Feedback
  • Support for “Drop Box” style web services
  • Support for nested SQL and parent child relationships
  • Support for custom code plugins and event hooks
  • Support for stored procedures
  • Support for POST operations with CI updates.

How to License

SWS Purchase Information

Alternatives

There are a few alternatives to our SWS solution. Let’s see how they compare.

Query Access Web Services

We have an KB article called Reporting Web Services: Using the REST Web Services to run a Query which demonstrates how you can make a “web service” out of a PeopleSoft query manager query. This can be an effective tool to generate web services.

However, the SWS offers many advantages over this delivered functionality.

• You have better control over the field names in the output.
• SWS offers more output encodings.
• The PeopleSoft query tool imposes unneeded complexity with data security and query tree security that often just gets in the way.
• SWS supports more advanced SQL and you are not forced into the SQL generated by query manager.

Traditional PeopleSoft Web Service Development Cycle

Alternatively, you can task a developer to create a new web service for each user request. If a vendor commissioned the PeopleSoft application team to develop a new web service, the following process would likely be followed. This assumes you are a medium to large organization with a formal development process.

• If you value your developer’s time at roughly $100 an hour. Then the cost to develop a new web service is somewhere between $3,600 and $13,000.
• With SWS, that amount can be drastically reduced. In some case, it can take just a few minutes to create a new web service and have it deployed in production.