Dispensable Information in a Request Body

You can send a POST or PUT HTTP request with a body to create or update a Web Intelligence resource. If you provide some piece of information, which is not needed to perform the requested action, the method simply ignores it and returns a successful message.

Example

You want to update some <dataLabels> property of a Waterfall chart by sending the following request:

PUT <base_webi_REST_URL>/documents/8084/reports/12/elements/27

In SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence, a Waterfall chart does not contain any legend. However, the request body you are sending contains a legend as follows:

<element type="Visualization"> 
    <parentId>2</parentId>  
    <content> 
        <chart type="Waterfall">
            <layout showDimensionsWithEmptyMeasureValues="true" showDimensionsWithMeasuresEqualToZero="true"
                showDimensionsWithSumOfMeasuresEqualToZero="true" showMeasuresWithEmptyDimensionValues="false"
                showTotal="true" parentAsTotal="false" duplicateRowAggregation="true" horizontal="false"/>  
            <title visible="true">
                ...
            </title>
            <legend visible="true">
                <style>
                    <border thickness="None">
                        <color rgb="#000000" alpha="0"/>
                    </border>
                    <background>
                        <color rgb="#000000" alpha="0"/>
                    </background>
                    <font size="12" face="Helvetica" italic="true" bold="true" strikethrough="false" 
                        underline="false" rgb="#00c7ff"/>
                    <alignment horizontal="Left" vertical="Center" textPolicy="Wrap"/>
                </style>
                ...
            </legend>
            <dataLabels type="Value" visible="false"> 
                <style> 
                    <border thickness="None"> 
                        <color alpha="255" rgb="#000000"/> 
                    </border>  
                    <background> 
                        <color alpha="0" rgb="#000000"/> 
                    </background>  
                    <font size="10" face="Colibri" italic="false" bold="true" strikethrough="false"
                        underline="false" rgb="#ffffff"/> 
                </style>
            </dataLabels>
        </chart>
    </content>
</element>

The REST Web Service SDK ignores the <legend> part and updates the chart as requested.

The response is the following message:

<success>
    <message>The resource of type 'Report element' with identifier '27' has been successfully updated.</message>
    <id>27</id>
</success>