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Design concepts
Learn about HCL Link services, projects, flows, maps and schemas.
Services
Service definitions define REST services and the endpoints of a service.
Defining a service
A service can be defined in HCL Link in a number of ways.

Design concepts
Learn about HCL Link services, projects, flows, maps and schemas.
- Introduction
  The documentation provided here defiens the main artifacts in HCL Link. It is necessar to understand what these artifacts are and the relationship between them.
- Services
  Service definitions define REST services and the endpoints of a service.
  - Defining a service
    A service can be defined in HCL Link in a number of ways.
    - Authentication
      Link services define the authenticaiton schemes to be used when invoking an endpoint.
    - Retry strategy
      Properties can be specified in the service definition which determine how to retry an API call should it fail.
    - Parameters
  - Defining endpoints
    An endpoint can represent either a single API call or it can be a composite endpoint whereby multiple endpoints can be called in sequence.
  - Using service definitions in Link
    Service descriptions can be used in several ways in HCL Link.
- Projects
  A project is a container for HCL Link artifacts.
- Flows
  A HCL Link flow is a transactional data flow comprised of processing nodes.
- Maps
  A HCL Link map defines how to generate data that complies to a specific schema. A map can have any number of inputs and outputs.
- Schemas
  Schemas specify the format of data witin HCL Link maps and flows.
- Connections and Actions
  This documentation describes connections and actions.
- Files
  Files are used in various places within HCL Link. HCL Link allows files to be uploaded to the HCL Linkserver.
- Flow variables
  Flow variables provide a means of passing information throughout a flow instance without requiring that the information to be passed through data links. flow variables are name-value pairs that persist, unless deleted.
- Cache variables
  Cache variables provide a means of processing information throughout a flow instance without requiring that the information to be passed through data links.

Defining a service

A service can be defined in HCL Link in a number of ways.

The service and its endpoints can be manually entered.
A service can be imported from an OpenAPI URL, or file. The import process supports both Swagger V2 and OpenAPI V3 specificaitons.
Imported from a previously exported service.
Imported from a HCL Link REST configuration file.

A service definition contains the following information:

Service name.
The base URL. Endoints defined within the service can specify a path that is relative to this base URL.
Authentication
Retry strategy
Parameters