REST API External Data Sources
LiveCompare’s Web Services API is asynchronous. As shown in the Running a Workflow from an External Program - Adder Example help topic, a Web Services client program that consumes a workflow must poll for a result from the Web Services API. While this approach allows a Web Services client to call a workflow as it would any other function, the asynchronous nature of LiveCompare’s Web Services API can complicate client-side programming.
In many cases, third-party applications only require access to the data returned by LiveCompare, which may be stored in an External Data Source. External Data Sources may be defined as REST API; these are available to Web services clients via a REST (Representational State Transfer) API. When a REST API External Data Source is created in LiveCompare, it may be accessed synchronously using either of the following URLs, which are available to the Web Services client:
http://<LiveCompare server name>/livecompare/xds/<GUID>.xdsx?schema
http://<LiveCompare server name>/livecompare/xds/<GUID>.xdsx
- URLs with the ?schema qualifier return the metadata for the External Data Source’s table in the JSON Table Schema format.
- URLs without the ?schema qualifier return the External Data Source’s table content in JSON format.
By default, REST API External Data Sources return a maximum of 1000 table rows.