Glossary Item Box

Government Gateway 2.2.0 (MR-01) ISV Developer Help (Doc Version 06/03/08) | Send comments on this topic.

# Welcome

This document describes the Government Gateway interfaces available to ISV applications. These are:

- The Gateway WS SOAP Public Interface which exposes limited Registration and Enrolment (R&E) functionality.
- The Gateway Transaction engine Document Submission Protocol which allows business transactions/forms be submitted to Department services.

#### Gateway R&E WS SOAP Interfaces

WS SOAP is a secure, lightweight, XML-based protocol for exchanging information in a decentralised, distributed environment. SOAP provides an open architecture for application-to-application communication known as Web services.

The four WS SOAP interfaces offered by Gateway are briefly described, however only the Public Interface is accessible to ISV applications.

- Portal Interface (This interface is used by Department (Web) Portals to access the Gateway)

> > The SOAP Portal Interface is available via a mutual SSL connection to the Gateway (i.e. it requires the client Portal to have an appropriate issued certificate – as well as the Gateway's server-side certificate). Possession of a client certificate means it is trusted by Gateway. This endpoint therefore exposes the full range of methods that are designed to be called by (on behalf of) individual citizens, organisation and agent users.

- Public Interface (This is the interface used by ISV Applications)

> > The SOAP Public Interface is available via a SSL connection to the Gateway (i.e. a client-side certificate is not required). Since a client certificate is not required any "client" can use this interface. However this also means the source is unknown to the Gateway and therefore cannot be "trusted" by the Gateway. Therefore this endpoint only exposes a 'read-only' subset of the methods available on the Portal Interface.

- Admin Interface

> > The SOAP Admin Interface is available via a mutual SSL connection to the Gateway. The methods can only be called by designated Service Owner "Admin users" – not normal Gateway users. The endpoint exposes methods that allow the service owners (from the back-end or potentially a Portal) to manage their services.

- KnownFactUpload Interface

> > The SOAP KnownFactUpload Interface is available via a mutual SSL connection to the Gateway. The methods can only be called by designated Service Owner "Admin users"– not normal Gateway users. The endpoint exposes methods that allows Service Owners to upload Known Facts to the Gateway.

#### Gateway Transactions Engine

Three message protocols are provided by the Transaction Engine, however only the Document Submission Protocol is accessible to ISV applications:

- Document Submission Protocol (This is the interface used by ISV Applications and Department Portals)

> > Allows ISV applications or Portals to submit business transactions/forms to Department services.

- Hub and Spoke Interchange protocol

> > Department to Department business transactions/forms submissions.

- Administration Message Protocol

> > An asynchronous message based version of the newer SOAP Admin Interface.

#### Additional Material

In addition to documenting the SOAP Public Interface and the Document Submission Protocol, this help file includes the following sections:

- R&E Concepts. This is a good place to start if you are new to the Gateway and want to understand the Registration and Enrolment concepts and how they relate to the SOAP Interface methods. Remember most these R&E operation can be performed through Government Gateway UI (www.gateway.gov.uk).
- Single Sign-On (SSO) – with Delegated Rights Management (RDM). This feature improves efficiency by allowing an organisation/agent to use it's existing authentication/access control systems to assign rights to act on it's enrolments – i.e. it's direct (and in the case of Agents also client enrolments it has) – to employees. Normally an organisation/agent would need to create, for each employee) a parallel Gateway User/Assistant account to prove this control.
- Gateway Security Token Service focuses on the creation, use and exchange of security tokens through the Security Token Service (STS) and the associated SOAP message structure.

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