Zero-touch Autopilot for WSDL Onboarding

Overview

The zero-touch autopilot feature streamlines the process of creating a REST API from a SOAP web service. It collapses the standard multi-step onboarding workflow—importing a WSDL, creating a service, generating operations, and defining mappings—into a single automated action.

API publishers provide a WSDL file as input. The autopilot then produces a complete draft service, including all operations and deterministic, full-field request and response mappings. Crucially, it also generates a per-operation readiness score, which identifies which operations can be published immediately and which require manual review.

This feature provides a fast path for onboarding common SOAP services. The traditional step-by-step flow remains available for cases requiring granular, manual control over each stage of the process.

How it works

The zero-touch autopilot performs a sequence of four automated actions in a single pass based on the provided WSDL.

flowchart TD
    A[WSDL File] --> B{Zero-touch Autopilot};
    B --> C[1. Import & Parse WSDL];
    C --> D[2. Create Draft Service];
    D --> E[3. Generate Operations];
    E --> F[4. Generate Mappings];
    F --> G((Draft Service));
    F --> H((Readiness Score));

    subgraph "Autopilot Process"
        C
        D
        E
        F
    end

    subgraph "Outputs"
        G
        H
    end

1. Imports and parses the WSDL: The platform ingests and analyzes the WSDL to materialize the canonical request and response contract for each operation. This step also infers critical backend details like the endpoint URL, SOAP version, and any authentication hints.
2. Creates the draft service: A new draft service is created with a suggested service key, name, and environment. The backend configuration is pre-filled with the details inferred from the WSDL.
3. Generates all operations: The platform creates a distinct operation for each portType/operation defined in the WSDL. It also infers a corresponding REST method (e.g., POST) and resource path for each operation.
4. Generates deterministic mappings: For every operation, the autopilot creates complete, deterministic mappings for the entire request and response message trees.

Readiness Score

After the autopilot completes, each generated operation is assigned a readiness score. This score indicates the level of confidence the platform has in the automated mapping and flags operations that may require manual intervention before publishing. The score allows you to focus your review efforts on areas with genuine ambiguity.

The readiness grades are the same as those used by the publish gate.

Post-Autopilot Workflow

After running the autopilot, follow these steps to finalize and publish your service:

1. Review: Examine the generated draft service and its mappings. Concentrate on any operations graded AUTO_READY_WITH_WARNINGS or MANUAL_REQUIRED.
2. Adjust: If necessary, modify the generated mappings using field-level overrides or adjust the transformation behavior with conversion options.
3. Confirm Backend: Verify the backend service configuration, including the endpoint URL, SOAP version, authentication settings, and timeout/retry policies. See Configure the backend for details.
4. Test and Publish: Use the integrated SOAP application test to validate the service. Once satisfied, publish the service. Publishing a version makes an immutable snapshot of the mappings live. The platform supports rollback to previous versions at any time.

See also

• Onboarding overview
• Import a WSDL
• How mapping works
• Publish & version a service

All SOAP-to-REST docs