External Services

A DCS service might depend on one or more non-DCS services to perform its tasks. For example, a DCS service might require information stored on a mainframe computer that can be accessed by using Microsoft Host Integration Services. These non-DCS services are known as external services.

If a DCS service depends on an external service, and that external service is unavailable, then the DCS service might be unable to function correctly and could fail. However, the DCS infrastructure provides a mechanism for specifying whether a DCS service depends on one or more external services, and whether any of these external services are currently unavailable. The workflow for a DCS service can query this information and take the appropriate action, depending on the availability of the external services on which it depends. If it is not convenient or possible to modify a DCS service, you can build a transparent process to perform this task and insert it into the pipeline for the DCS service.

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You can retrieve information about DCS services and the external services that they depend on by using the SelectExternalService operation in the ExternalServiceService Web service (one of the DCS ManagementServices Web services).
Alternatively, you can use the static CheckExternalServicesAvailability method exposed by the Microsoft.ConnectedIndustry.ProcessExecution.Common.TaskHelper class. This class is located in the Microsoft.ConnectedIndustry.ProcessExecution.Common assembly provided with DCS.

An administrator can use the DCS Management Services console to define an external service and mark its status (enabled or disabled).

If an external service is unavailable, it might provide an offline queuing mechanism. The DCS Management Services console provides a flag that lets an administrator specify whether calls to the external service can be queued if the service is unavailable. A DCS service or transparent process can examine this flag and take the appropriate action.



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