The
"getGoTerm" service that we have been discussing in this tutorial is a
Synchronous Moby Service, meaning that if you execute it, the response from the
server will immediately contain the result data. This is distinct from
Asynchronous Moby Services where the service provider gives you a "ticket" with which
you can retrieve the result data at a later time (e.g. for long-executing services). The way to know if a discovered service is Synchronous or Asynchronous is by the "category" method of the
MOBY::Client::ServiceInstance object. Synchronous
services use the category "moby", while Asynchronous services use the category "moby-async".
This part of the tutorial deals only with Synchronous Moby Services.
Moby services can be invoked once, or multiple times, in a single message.
So, let's discover our service and then execute it:
use MOBY::Client::Central;
use MOBY::Client::Service; # this is what we use to interact with a service
my $m = MOBY::Client::Central->new;
my ($serv_instances, $reg) = $m->findService(
authURI => "mydomain.mycompany.org",
serviceName => "getGoTerm");
my $SI = shift @$serv_instances; # $SI is a MOBY::Client::ServiceInstance object
# remember, because we have queried using the authorty and service name we are assured
# that there will be only one response, so it is safe to "shift" the array above
print "Service Name: ", $SI->name, "\n";
print "Authority: ", $SI->authority, "\n";
print "Description: ", $SI->description, "\n";
print "Category: ", $SI->category, " (should be 'moby')\n";
# remember from the last tutorial page that you can find out what
# the correct input is, and its parameter name (articleName),
# by using the "input" and "output" methods of the ServiceInstance object.
# here we'll just set it explicitly...
my $articleName = "my_input_parameter";
my $wsdl = $m->retrieveService($SI);
# we now have the WSDL description of the Service
# we use this to create a MOBY::Client::Service object
my $SERV = MOBY::Client::Service->new(service => $wsdl);
# the $SERV object knows everything it needs to know to interact with
# that Moby Service, so all we have to do it provide the correct data
my $articleName =
my $inputdata1 = "<Object namespace='GO' id='0050789'>";
my $inputdata2 = "<Object namespace='GO' id='0050789'>";
@single_invocation = ([$articleName, $inputdata1]);
@multiple_invocation = ([$articleName, $inputdata1], [$articleName, $inputdata2]);
my $result1 = $SERV->execute(XMLinputlist => \@single_invocation);
my $result2 = $SERV->execute(XMLinputlist => \@multiple_invocation);
# The content of $result is the raw XML of whatever the service provider
# gave us. There are a variety of ways to deal with this data, or you
# can write your own. The Moby Perl code has a module called
# MOBY::CommonSubs that contains a paradigmatic way of parsing the
# output message. We'll use that module here.
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