Using the Project Data Service (Microsoft Project 2002)

Article
06/14/2014

Using the Project Data Service

This content is no longer actively maintained. It is provided as is, for anyone who may still be using these technologies, with no warranties or claims of accuracy with regard to the most recent product version or service release.

Summary

The Microsoft® Project Data Service (PDS) is an integral component of Microsoft Project Server, and partners and developers are encouraged to use the PDS to access Microsoft Project Server data. The two samples that accompany this article are generic applications that can call the PDS native or extension methods. One of these applications is written in Microsoft Visual Basic® 6.0, and the other is written in Microsoft Visual C#™ .NET.

Introduction

The PDS Test Utility and the PDS Test.NET samples provide a developer with generic tools for calling the PDS via SOAP, which can be useful for testing solutions that use the PDS. In addition, the code behind these samples makes it easy for a developer to see how to call the PDS, both using Visual Basic and the SOAP toolkit, as well as C# and the .NET Framework.

This article assumes that you are familiar with using Visual Basic 6.0 and SOAP for the PDS Test Utility, and that you are familiar with writing code in C# and the .NET Framework for the PDSTest.NET sample.

Using the PDS Test Utility

The PDS Test Utility is the Visual Basic 6.0 version of the utility that can call the PDS via SOAP. Requirements to use the sample are Visual Studio® 6.0 and the SOAP Toolkit 2.0 SP2, which can be downloaded from MSDN®.

To point the application to your Microsoft Project Server installation, first edit the PDSTest.ini file in the text editor of your choice and change the value for PCURL under the LOCAL group to point to the URL of your Microsoft Project Server installation.

  [LOCAL]

  PCURL=http://servername/projectserver

PDSTest.ini also contains the groups of PDS calls that are displayed in the user interface of the application. Therefore, you may want to edit PDSTest.ini to include new groups of PDS calls to make it easier to send those requests to the PDS.

To run the PDS Test Utility:

Open the PDSTest.vbp file in Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0.

On the Run menu, click Start.

The
PDS Test Utility
appears.

Enter the name of the Microsoft Project Server installation in the Microsoft Project Server URL field.

In the XML Requests field, select PDSCalls, ProjectCalls, or ResourceCalls.

The
PDS Test Utility
displays the XML requests. You can edit the default XML requests that the
PDS Test Utility
sends by editing the appropriate sections in the PDSTest.ini file.

Click Execute.

Using PDSTest.NET

PDSTest.NET is the C# version of the utility that you can use to call the PDS through SOAP. Requirements to use this sample are Visual Studio .NET and the .NET Framework.

To point the application to your Microsoft Project Server installation, first edit the file app.config in the text editor of your choice or the Visual Studio .NET IDE, and under appSettings, change the value for the value attribute of the add element.

  <configuration>

      <appSettings>

          <add key="PDSTest.NET.PDSService.PDS" value="http://servername/projectserver/PDS.WSDL"/>

      </appSettings>

  </configuration>

To run PDSTest.NET:

Open the PDSTest.sln file in Microsoft Visual C# .NET.

On the Debug menu, click Start.

Enter your user name and password in the User Name and Password fields.

In the XML Requests field, select PDSCalls, ProjectCalls, or ResourceCalls.

PDSTest.NET
displays the XML requests. You can edit the default XML requests that PDSTest.NET
sends by editing the appropriate sections in the PDSTest.xml file.

If you need to change the Microsoft Project Server URL, click Update URL, enter the new URL in the Microsoft Project Server URL field, and then click OK.