Best approach selection

Although, it is possible to implement a service using either approaches, each approach has some advantages and limitations when it comes to the capabilities.

  1. RESTful approach
    1. Advantages
      • Less verbose & reads closer to the typical HTTP interaction
      • Out of the box transport level error handling
      • Out of the box support for retrial in case of temporary outages
      • Out of the box support for proxied connectivity
      • Out of the box support for future enhancements in Content Integration Framework
    2. Limitations
      • Cannot be used for non-RESTful or non-HTTP integrations, such as database or file system interactions
  2. Functional approach
    1. Advantages
      • Can be used for non-RESTful or non-HTTP integrations, such as database or file system interactions
    2. Limitations
      • No out-of-the-box support available for transport level error handling, retrials, proxied connectivity, and any future enhancements from Content Integration Framework.
      • If required, the explicit implementation of missing out-of-the-box capabilities can make service implementations very verbose.

You can see that the Functional approach is well suited for non-RESTful or non-HTTP based integrations. Any service implemented using RESTful approach can also be implemented using Functional approach by taking care of all the necessary out-of-the-box capabilities provided by Content Integration Framework. While Functional approach gives flexibility in terms of implementation design, it takes away a few useful capabilities.

Inbound RESTful services

From version 12.1.1 onward, Content Integration Framework allows exposing webhook to facilitate receipt & processing of content lifecycle events from external systems. Such services are invoked by the external systems interested in publishing content lifecycle events to Unica products. As of release 12.1.1, Unica Centralized Offer Management can listen to the events received via such RESTful endpoints and synchronize Offers using the associated content details.