How Data is Passed to a Service

Message

Use the Message component to send your input data to the Spectrum™ Technology Platform service and receive output data from the service.

You can also use the Message component to override a service's default processing options. The default options for a service are set in Management Console. For example, the service ValidateAddress is capable of producing output in either mixed case or upper case. Let's say that in most instances, you need upper case output. However, one of your applications requires output in mixed case. In this situation, you would set the default for casing in the ValidateAddress service to upper case and override the default casing setting for that single application using the API. For those requests that should be handled according to the defaults you have specified, it is not necessary to provide any input options in your request.

The properties for Message include context properties, such as account ID, account password, service name, and service method; option properties, which are the service-specific runtime options; and error properties, which are the error class, error message, and error stacktrace.

DataTable

The DataTable component contains the records for your input and output data. Using the methods associated with this class, you define the column names for your output and add records to the data set. The Reset and Next methods are used to iterate over the results that are returned in a response from the server.

DataRow

The DataRow contains schema information and a list of data rows. Individual records reside in rows of data. For each output data row there are record-level qualifiers, field-level data, and field-level qualifiers.

Record-level qualifiers describe the processing of the record. Record-level qualifiers include status of the request (Success, Failure, or Error) and confidence in the accuracy of the output record.

Field-level data contains the validated, standardized, or enhanced record.

Field-level qualifiers include additional data about a given field. For example, the type of a Private Mailbox according to USPS categorization is a field-level qualifier.

Server

The Server component represents the Spectrum™ Technology Platform server. Using a Server component, you connect, disconnect, or access a specific service from the server.

Service

The Service component is used to process the message you're sending (i.e., send the input message and get back the response). The Service component has just one method: Process message.