Hey everyone,
I have a rather stupid question which i hope you don't mind me asking! I am currently specifying a new community web site which is due to be written in php (followin a relatively standard community site setup with profile pages, forums, blogs etc). This is all fine however it needs to link into an off the shelf third party client managment system so it can update the client information when they change their personal details. They say on their website: "Our APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) use XML Web Services to provide a platform-independent means of automating your business processes." which implies i can interface with the system via PHP (or any other language) via their web services.
The only documentation they apparently provide for their API is their ndoc class list which lists all of the relevant methods and classes for the client management api/web service. For each method it has a C# and VB version. There is no mention of the XML markup or whether it uses SOAP, XML-RPC, REST or any other protocol. There is absolutely no publically accessible information/manuals/instructions for this as it is a commercial system.
Am i going mad or don't they need to provide more detail than this (such as what protocol they are using for their webservice, what the XML structure/markup should be and how the responses are structured)? Presumably once i know this then i can plug the C#/VB methods into the data i send them from php which will then run remotely on their systems and send a response back. I just wanted to check with some others that I am correct in these assertions and that this isn't actually standard (but i haven't seen it), ie can I actually just use standard markup and integrate the methods they list without needing any more system specific information? Ultimately if you were presented with just this info what other information would you be requesting?
I would be most grateful if anyone that is more knowledgable than I in this field could shed some light on this setup so i can work out exactly what information i need to go forward.
Thanks so much for your help as ever,
Dave
