Compression with the Web Services Send Reply Activity

During run time, the Web Services Send Reply activity sends an HTTP response complaint with the HTTP/HTTPS 1.0 protocol to the client. The Send Reply activity supports compression with the gzip format only.

Note: The Send Reply activity does not support the deflate format or the common UNIX file compression format called compress.
The compression run time behavior of the Send Reply activity is dependent on the following conditions:
  • At the message level, the value of the Accept-Encoding header in the original HTTP request received by the Web Services Provide Service activity is passed to the Send Reply activity to determine if the body of the HTTP response is compressed or not compressed as shown in Figure 1.
  • The setting of the Use Compression/Decompression check box at the activity level.

These conditions affect the compression run time behavior of the Send Reply activity are described in the following sections and in the table provided in the Run time Compression Behavior section.

Accept-Encoding Value at the Message Level

During run time, a Web Services Provide Service activity receives an HTTP request from a client. In the same orchestration, a Send Reply activity sends a response back to the original client. The value of the Accept-Encoding header in the original request received by the Provide Service activity is stored internally on the Integration Appliance. The stored value is passed to the Send Reply activity and is used to determine if the body of the response is compressed or not and the encoding type, as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. The Accept-Encoding header

Setting Compression/Decompression at the Activity Level

By default, compression is turned on at the activity level for the Send Reply activity. You can turn off compression at the activity level by clearing the Use Compression/Decompression check box. The Use Compression/Decompression check box is available in the Configure task of the activity. The second column labeled HTTP Compression CLI Command in the following table represents the setting of the Use Compression/Decompression check box.

Run time Compression Behavior

The following table describes the compression run time behavior when the Integration Appliance sends an HTTP response to the client:
Use Compression/ Decompression Check Box (Activity Level) Accept-Encoding Value of the HTTP Request (Message Level) Integration Appliance Compression Run Time Behavior
selected gzip or gzip,deflate The Integration Appliance sends the body of the response compressed in the gzip format and the Content-Encoding header is set to gzip in the response.
selected identity The Integration Appliance sends the body of the response uncompressed and the Content-Encoding header is set to identity in the response. 
selected not set, or any other string except gzip or identity The Integration Appliance sends the body of the response uncompressed and the Content-Encoding header is set to identity in the response. 
cleared value is not significant The Integration Appliance sends the body of the response as is (unchanged) and the Content-Encoding header is as is in the response. (The value of the Content-Encoding header in the request is passed unchanged to the response.)
Note: The Use Compression/Decompression check box will be deprecated in a future release. Use the Content-Encoding and Accept-Encoding HTTP Parameters in the HTTP request to specify how to decompress the body of the HTTP request and compress the body of the HTTP response.



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Timestamp icon Last updated: Wednesday, 15 June 2016


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