Setting limit for Usage of connections of a web service

[vinodchinthakin]

Hi,

My query is After exposing a process/object as a web service from Blue Prism, Can we set any limit for connections. For example I want only 3 applications can able to use/connect my web service. More than 3 applications should not able to use my web service.
If other person wants to connect to more applications, I should able to increase the limit of connections.

is there any possibility in Blue Prism to setup a limit for Usage of connections for a web service which is exposed by Blue Prism.

Thanks in advance

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vinod chinthakindi
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[ewilson]

Hi @vinod chinthakindi,

There's no configurable option in Blue Prism to control how many people can connect to a process/VBO once it's been exposed as a SOAP service. With that said, available licenses may come into play depending on the design of your process/VBO.

If this is a problem, you might consider having access to the exposed SOAP services go through a proxy/gateway/firewall then you should have more options for controlling the inbound traffic (depending on your​ software).

Cheers,

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Eric Wilson
Director, Partner Integrations for Digital Exchange
Blue Prism
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[Walter.Koller]

Please correct me if I am wrong but this would be my experience with BP 6.4 and web services.
And even though it sounds like a description it is actually more like several questions 😉

When exposed, a process will be available as a web service on all resources. I am not aware of any way to hide a WS to be not visible on the resource WSDL.
It would be possible to disable a process to be restricted to run on resources. I assume the WS will still be visible, there would be an error message to the calling system, I expect.

When speaking about one single resource being used for WS, the concurrent executions are based on process definition. If the process is defined ​foreground exclusive (default behavior) the process can only run once at this resource. Therefore it is only possible to start the WS once as well.
Even with background processes there would be dedicated runtime resources necessary with individual port numbers, although they can be on the same VM.

I don't have experiences with resource pools and WS. But since resource pools are only exist inside BP and are not network components, the invoking system has to choose one resource to call the WS. I don't think BP is capable of re-routing the WS call to a resource and then direkt the results back to the initiating resource so the invoking system would get a reply. And I don't think BP is capable of having one resource being proxy for WS. 
But as I said I don't have experiences in such scenarios and would be happy to hear that I am wrong 🙂

I don't see how it would be possible to have a WS called more than once at the same time on the same VM. 
It would be possible with several VMs which would allow the restriction on which VM is allowed to run the process (and only communicate those VMs to the other system). In this case the calling system would have to chose/cycle though the available VMs.

Another option is to use network balancing and expose only one hostname that would translate this hostname to the actual target VMs.
Here it should be also possible to define the target rotation, concurrent connections, ...

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Walter Koller
Solution Manager
Erste Group IT International GmbH
Europe/Vienna
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[vinodchinthakin]

Thanks Eric. I think I got my required answer.

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vinod chinthakindi
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[vinodchinthakin]

Hi Walter, 

Thanks for your response. I think you didn't get my exact point.

I don't see how it would be possible to have a WS called more than once at the same time on the same VM. 

I have developed a process and exposed as Web service. So that other technology persons like sales force, UI path or BP will use my web service in their VM's.
Is there any configurable option in Blue Prism to control how many people can connect to a process/VBO once it's been exposed as a SOAP service. ??

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vinod chinthakindi
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