The MCP applications use an HTTP client interface to call the ePortal service proxy, which then calls the external Web service and returns the result. The ePortal MCP agent (EPORTALMCPAGENT) installation contains the following COBOL85 include file that is an HTTP client API interface:

SYMBOL/EPORTAL/OUTBOUND/INCLUDE

The COBOL program calls the HTTP client API interface to communicate with the ePortal service proxy running on an ePortal Web Cluster. The SYMBOL/EPORTAL/OUTBOUND/INCLUDE file internally calls the ePortal outbound library (SYSTEM/EPORTAL/OUTBOUND) that is also included in the ePortal MCP agent installation.

The ePortal outbound library interfaces with the WEBAPPSUPPORT library to communicate with the ePortal service proxy running on an ePortal Web Cluster. The outbound service requests from the MCP host to the ePortal service proxy can be made either synchronously or asynchronously. The data being sent in the request and received in the reply can be secured using an SSL protocol, along the entire data path from the MCP host to the external Web Service.

For more information on the MCP HTTP client interface API library, refer to the ePortal Platform Generation 5 Planning and Implementation Guide.

This section describes the following topics: