You need something that can process Multipart-form encoded data passed to your RPG program.

When you say "Call this webserver" do you mean the mobile apps will be issuing a CGI POST action along with the text (i.e., customer number) and file (i.e., photo)? If so, then a multipart-form is what you need to handle.

Right now, unless you write it yoursef, you need to use something like our CGILIB (www.cozTools.com) which does this kind of thing easily. There may be some other packages that do this, but our product does it just fine.

Also, you may want to look at the IBM SQL Web Services. Perhaps working some kind of SQL query into it might do the job for you without writing RPG. I don't know for sure. But here is a link to the IBM site on web services with SQL.

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/ibmi/library/i-incorporating-web-service/index.html

Yes Sir. Mobile apps will be doing a post from .NET framework/other third party mobile softwares. They will be consuming iSeries webservice that I'm planning to make. The data they will be posting is customer number / name etc and an image/photo.

They could come directly to our DB2 file and write the image to a BLOB field in a table, but due to security concerns, management wants to have a webservice serving this feature so writing is handled by an RPGLE program (that is used for most of the development here).

So does this mean that our IBM Web Administration for i do not take BLOB as a parm when we deploy a webservice? Sorry for asking if the answer is too obvious, I'm pretty new to this world.

Not sure what "IBM Web Administration for i" means.

The basic IBM RPG IV interface for web stuff is CGI. The CGI APIs shipped with the system include qzhbCgiParse. It is used to retrieve the contents of FORMs from a web page, Web apps, such as your .NET stuff, would simulate a web page form and send a POST to the web server. RPG would be called and you'd call the cgiParse API. That API does NOT support Multipart-forms which are required for File uploads to the IBM i system. You will need to use a 3rd party package. I have one in COZTOOLS called CGILIB that supports multipart-forms, but those web-based things like PHP and the rest probably have some kind of file upload capabilities, but I do not use those tools.

If you make the target of your POST a php !--script--, it's fairly easy. The parms are in $_POST array and the file(s) in $_FILES array. Save the file to the IFS (move_uploaded_file) and then just pass the cust parm and IFS path to an RPG stored proc on the backend and do whatever.

But it depends too on what you mean by web service. WSDL? RESTFUL? POX? 

Chris Ringer 

Thanks Guys for your response..Let me clarify...

@ Chris - We are using WSDL. Unfortunately we are not using PHP. I don't think it's even in our iSeries.

@ Bob Cozzi - It's our HTTP Server Administration (IBM Web Administration for i). We can create webservice server and deploy web services thru that interface supplied by IBM. It'll take care of the wsdl etc etc behind the scenes.

Responses greatly appreciated.