When using UNICOM Intelligence Author Server Edition, all questionnaires are stored on an UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer. The Authoring Web Service is designed for the mutual-communication between the UNICOM Intelligence Author client and the UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer.

The following diagram provides a simplified representation of the Authoring Web Service architecture. Arrows indicate dependencies.

Part of the Data Model, the Metadata Model is used for accessing metadata. See Authoring web service object model for more information.

Uses standard Internet protocols (such as HTTP and SOAP) to provide remote users access to the Metadata Model objects. The Web Service is designed to reduce the number of server round-trips. The Authoring Web Service allows a client to request information from multiple questionnaire documents.

To use this component, you must first create a working environment that will login to the server and retrieve a ticket that identifies user status. The following demonstrates the basic steps used when opening a document:

Considering that the resources the Authoring Web Service accesses are located on the UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer, users must have the proper authority to access the server resources.

The first step in using the Authoring Web Service is to login to the server and retrieve a ticket. The ticket contains the individual user identities. After retrieving the ticket, you can call subsequent functions.

Most of the Authoring Web Service operations are session-related; all necessary information is stored in the server user session.

The second step is to call Initialize in order to initialize the session environment. After initialization, you can access other functions. At this point, you can open a document. The OpenDocument method returns the compressed questionnaire MDD file to the client (the files are compressed to alleviate network traffic). The returned documents must be decompressed before they can be loaded with a local MDM object.

After changing the document, you can save the questionnaire MDD file back to the UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer.

The Authoring Web Service Object Model provides web methods for questionnaires in an UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer server.