Debugging an HTTP 403 Error when viewing SOAP Catalogs

In the WRC, we often see customers who have encountered a problem viewing their SOAP Catalog pages in a browser. This article will explain why the error is being encountered, as well as suggest a fix. This explanation is focused on the symptoms seen in InterSystems IRIS, but similar behavior can be seen in more recent versions of Caché.

The Problem:

You are trying to create new SOAP Web Services in InterSystems IRIS. When you go to view the SOAP Catalog for what you have created so far you encounter the following error in your browser:

On older CSP Gateway and Caché instances, this might instead display:

Why this happens:

When you attempt to view a SOAP catalog page, IRIS needs to use %SOAP.WebServiceInfo and %SOAP.WebServiceInvoke classes underneath the covers. However, we do not allow user applications to access most "%" classes. This information is detailed in the old Caché documentation found here: https://cedocs.intersystems.com/latest/csp/docbook/DocBook.UI.Page.cls?K...

How to fix the Problem:

We strongly suggest that you use a SOAP Web Client to generate an HTTP SOAP request to call Caché SOAP Web Services rather than using the catalog pages.

However, if you still need to access the SOAP Catalog pages in a TEST environment, then you can work around this by setting the following global nodes:

                %SYS>set ^SYS("Security","CSP","AllowClass",webapplicationname,"%SOAP.WebServiceInfo")=1

                %SYS>set ^SYS("Security","CSP","AllowClass",webapplicationname,"%SOAP.WebServiceInvoke")=1

Where the “webapplication” variable contains your actual application name. For example, if you were trying to view a SOAP Catalog page for a Web Application named "/csp/test/", you would need to set the following global nodes:

                %SYS>s ^SYS("Security","CSP","AllowClass","/csp/test/","%SOAP.WebServiceInfo")=1

                %SYS>s ^SYS("Security","CSP","AllowClass","/csp/test/","%SOAP.WebServiceInvoke")=1

Again, we do not recommend that you enable these settings in anything besides a TEST environment. You can find more information about how to access the SOAP Catalog and Test pages in InterSystems IRIS here: https://docs.intersystems.com/irislatest/csp/docbook/Doc.View.cls?KEY=GSOAP_WebService#GSOAP_service_catalog_page