As discussed in the Personify Universal and Simple Web Services section, the Personify Web Services provide an alternative to using the Personify Application Program Interface (API) directly to communicate with the Personify application. The Personify API is a Microsoft .NET framework class library and can only be called from another .NET assembly.
This section focuses on the REST (Representational State Transfer) Services introduced with Personify 7.3.1 as an alternative to using the Personify Simple Web Services. Personify Universal and Simple Web Services, may be called from any Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) or Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) enabled client, providing Personify API functionality to legacy applications and other non-Microsoft platforms.
The Personify REST Web Services, on the other hand, were created using
the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and use JavaScript Object Notation
(JSON) format for data requests/responses. By using WCF to create REST
Web Services, it eliminates your need for a Service Proxy or specific
client configuration to use the web services. As you can see in the following
image, REST Web Services are the only web services that use the JSON format.
This section discusses how the REST Web Services interact between your application, the Web Server, and eventually your Personify database to consume the services. It also discusses how to work with the services by extending them or simply testing them. Finally, this guide provides you with a list of the REST Web Services with a definition of the associated web method, an example of the query request and response formats, and a schema example.
This section is intended for experienced programmers using the Personify API web services to communicate with the Personify API. These programmers should have familiarity with web service concepts, XML, XML schemas, the Personify API class library, and the Personify data model.