Appendix C: Structure of IP Notification Messages

For the purpose of the SOAP implementation, message transport is not limited to any kind of protocol. SOAP requests are sent as notifications containing payload data as well as transport-specific out-of-band information. As HTTP is most frequently used as transport for SOAP requests through the internet, an ISAPI listener is provided (see SOAP ISAPI Listener Task for IIS). However, any kind of client who "talks" Notifier could issue SOAP requests. For example, a COM object that allows to directly send SOAP packets to CIC.

HTTP and Notifier protocols transport SOAP messages between components in the CIC environment.

Since Interaction Processor does not directly support Notifier requests, notifications are used to emulate the request/response mechanism. The SOAP request notifications use CIC's eSOAP_REQUEST_OBJECT object type and an object ID that identifies the client. The notification event ("Initiator Event") can either be explicitly specified or the SOAPAction is will be used as default. The response is sent back to the client with the object type eSOAP_RESPONSE_OBJECT. The object ID uniquely identifies the client and is used to send the response back to the right client. The clients use GetNotifierSequenceNumber to obtain a unique identifier to identify themselves. Clients that do not expect a response must set the ‘Respond' flag in the request data block to ‘false'. The Message data of the request and response have the following structure.