Hi All,
I figured I would place my own answer down for what I did, that way the next poor sap in a similar situation might find it helpful.
When I was goofing around with Wonderware’s web services I found that the REST node has a “JSON/XML format Body” in the configuration. Reviewing Wonderware’s documentation: “Wonderware Operations Integration - Supervisory WEBSVC OI Server G-2.1 (Version 1.0) Help” and watching Wonderware’s “How to Configure the Wonderware Web Service Client OI Server”, I found that the body for a REST connection can be configured. Meaning that I could type my XML into a string and send it through the tag provided. To accesses this data tag the default name is $op$ww.post.body.
By using a script inside the object, the XML command can be formed with simple string. To pass the actual data along, follow standard Quick .net string’s for example: “This info is:” + variable;. Just remember to add the appropriate header to the beginning of the XML. In my case it was : "<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv=""http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"" xmlns:ker=""yyyyyyyyyyyyy "">". Also, make sure that the entire XML command is added into the body tag.
This led to the next problem. Wonderware System Platform limits the string to 1024 bytes or 1024 characters. That is not a lot of characters to work with if you have poorly written XML command that the Web Services is expecting. There is a work around to this limit! According to Microsoft the max for C is double that amount, which means a whopping 2,048 bytes. To access this amount, it gets interesting.
To gain the 2,048 bytes, a user define object needs to be created. Then a sting attribute with IO turned on. The strings attribute needs to be entered under the device integration object (in my case using the DDE Suite link client) and the item reference needs to be entered. Deploy the device integration object. Now back in the user define object’s script, click the display attribute browser, find the device integration object, and the attribute name. Select it. There should be the long name of the string object. Now going through the typical string assignment, assign the XML command to it. For example: DDESuiteLinkClient_Name.Topic_Name.UserDefineObject_Name.Attribute_Name = "<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv=""http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/""…etc;”
With most device drivers, the user sets the topic update interval within the System Management Console. However, with web services, if the driver has 0 in the update interval column then the program can be used to command the update. To command the update an associated attribute needs to be configured to the “Post.run” of the device driver. With that setup, the program will just need to write a 1 to this tag, and the driver will execute the XML body.
When writing directly to the DDE Suite Link, a delay is needed to allow time for the string variable to update. This time delay is a complete cycle of the Engine. After writing the XML to the attribute body name, create a Boolean instance to toggle on. This bit will trigger a simple script on the next scan. The script turns off the bit, and then turns on the “Post.Run”. Once this is done, the XML that is loaded into XML body, will be sent to the Web Service Host. And after the sent command is sent, the driver will turn off the “Post.Run”.
