SoftPro Developer Forum

We are planning on having our select server integrate with another application outside of our network (third party solution). Will he select server API work well for this, or does it have to be local? If it does work for this, is there documented best practices for exposing the select server API externally, and for setting up the right user in select server for API select access only?

Can you provide more details as to exactly how you're hoping to use the API? What would the external party do?

Hey John,

We have a sales/CRM application that is hosted with a third party. We are sending them event notifications (via web service), but the plan is to use the API from the third party system to access our system to query for order details. The goal is to eliminate some double entry. I can see in the sample documentation where it uses a username/password/network address. My basic question is, what is the recommended user account setup (i.e. permissions) for read only access into our select server for this third party product? Also, what are the best practices for opening the select server api externally so it can be accessed by this third party CRM product?

3rd party access to the Select Server in this manner is not recommended. With the current versions of Select, the client API not only communicates directly to the Select Server, but also to directly to the backend SQL Server. Over a public internet connection, this presents a security risk. In addition, the API will not perform adequately over a high latent network connection such as the Internet.

However, there is good news. Our next major release of SoftPro Select, v3.0, is intended to support this type of scenario. Select v3.0 will removed the directly client access to the database, as well tune the client-to-server communications in order to provide a good experience over high latent connections.

Also note, the current API does not support read-only access. The permissions specified for a user do not apply when the order is accessed through the API, where you always have full read-write access. This will also be changed in v3.0 so permissions apply both through the UI and through the API.