Tutorial Prerequisites

Before you run this tutorial, make sure you have or meet the following prerequisites:

Resource prerequisites:

• A web service - this tutorial uses a simple temperature conversion web service hosted by w3schools.com.
• A web services client - you need to obtain metadata from the web service, in order to know how to construct the requests and process responses. This tutorial uses SoapUI - an open-source web service testing application to obtain this information. You can download the product from www.soapui.org.
• A client program - a program is required to initiate the initial HTTP requests, and display the HTTP responses received. This tutorial uses a COBOL program called TempConvert.cbl, located in %PUBLIC%\documents\Micro Focus\extend x.x.x\sample\rmnet, which already contains the required RMNet and XML Extensions syntax.
• A trusted root certificate - the client requests use the secure https protocol, and therefore they require a trusted root CA certificate. The ca-bundle.crt certificate, which is freely available and is supplied in the same directory as the COBOL client program, contains the required key for the requests that you will make.
• The XML Extensions reference documentation - TempConvert.cbl uses a number of XML Extensions statements; this reference information explains the syntax in use.

Knowledge prerequisites:

• RMNet uses HTTP extensively. While it is not necessary to be an HTTP expert, this tutorial presumes familiarity with basic HTTP terminology such as the HTTP methods GET and PUT, HTTP headers, and cookies. Several external web-based HTTP tutorials are available to help you understand these concepts.
• This tutorial creates XSLT documents for creating SOAP requests and consuming SOAP responses, and so familiarity with basic XSLT is presumed. Again, several external web-based XSLT tutorials are available.