This section discusses how to access the API from a client program of your own. The prerequisites for use of the API differ from one language and platform to another and mostly depending on the language’s support for SOAP. Some languages, like C#, provide seamless interfacing by default whereas others like Java and C/C++ require additional libraries and tools to be installed. As SOAP is a widely recognized standard, these libraries and tools are available for most platforms.

You should familiarize yourself with the documentation for the library or framework you choose. One important point for performance of a series of API calls is to make them keep using the same HTTP connection, rather than each call closing its connection at the end. Each framework will have its own way of setting this, but the result is the same: on HTTP 1.0, use Keep-Alive; on HTTP 1.1, do not send Connection: close.

We will now proceed by taking a look at the general principles of using the API and then how to use it with C#, Java and C/C++.