Connect to general web services
Use the general web services setting to connect with any SOAP compliant service.
According to W3C, a Web Service is a software system designed to support interoperable Machine to Machine interaction over a network. WebService is frequently referred to as Web API. A Web Service is usually a program that you deploy in your Web Server. A client program can invoke the Web Service using HTTP protocol, just like when a browser is trying to retrieve a web page. The difference is a Web Service usually returns data instead of a web page.
As you can see in the definition, the original idea of the Web Service is to enable interoperability from machine to machine, even between machines with different architectures and operating systems. In order to do so, the web service exchanges information in XML format that follow the SOAP standard. If you would like to get more detail about the SOAP standard, you can go to the W3C website and find the SOAP specification. For the most part, you don’t have to know SOAP standard to work with the web services.
Before you can invoke an operation in a Web Service, you need to know the detail of what is provided in that Web Service first. A Web Service usually gives you this detail in the form of Web Service Definition Language (WSDL). A WSDL is also in XML format. To get a WSDL from a Web Service, you usually append “?WSDL” at the end of the URL for the Web Service. Later on, you will see that you need to know the URL to get the WSDL for your Web Service when you configure the SI WebParts for the ver first time.
By selecting 'Web Services' in the Configuration Editor and the webpart configurator in the SI webparts you can both read and write to almost any external data source. The 'Web Services' setting will allow connection with any SOAP compliant service. This allows us to connect and interact with all standard Microsoft solutions such Microsoft Dynamics, Project server, Performance Point, MS CRM etc etc.