Successful use of crossbase web services based on the crossbase.api to relaunch the Ceratizit website
Reutte/Tirol, 11/11/2014: With 5,300 employees at 22 production plants and over 50 sales subsidiaries around the globe, CERATIZIT has been developing and manufacturing hard material solutions for metal cutting and wear protection for over 90 years, making it a global player in the carbide sector. From highly specialized cutting tools, indexable inserts and carbide rods to new types of carbide and cermet, for example for wood and stone working.
CERATIZIT has been successfully using the crossbase PIM, MAM and cross-media solution with SAP interface for 12 years. Numerous catalogs, brochures, data sheets and more are produced every year, in many languages and country variants, using the crossbase software and various systems and media are supplied with product information on a fully automatic basis.
Central functions of the solution
Relaunch of the website
This year another milestone was achieved. Previously, the website was maintained in a self-contained CMS separate from crossbase. This resulted in a lot of information having to be stored redundantly and processes such as translation and image conversion being represented twice.
For the relaunch, the team focused from the beginning on making crossbase an integral part of the site to allow the reuse of product information here too.
API server and web services, benefits and advantages
There are two variants for the provision of data: the daily export of an XML file from the database and direct access to the database from the CMS using web services and the API server. CERATIZIT opted for the second approach.
The advantage is that up-to-date data is available continuously, not just once a day. The other benefit is flexibility. There is no need to configure an XML interface: instead, data can be flexibly retrieved through various web services and integrated in the third-party application.
Technology
The crossbase web services are based on the crossbase.api (Application Programming Interface). The web services are integrated into third-party applications by creating proxy classes once in the development environment (e.g. dot NET) using the XML description file. During runtime, the web service is invoked and the required data is supplied by the server. The required data is transmitted by web service using SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) messages or REST (Representational State Transfer).
The application modules and further information
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