A group of services that you share with IBM webMethods Cloud is called an application. Applications are created on the on-premise Integration Server and uploaded to IBM webMethods Cloud. IBM webMethods Cloud can execute any service hosted by an on-premise Integration Server. When you share services in an application, you are sharing the metadata for the service. For Integration Server services, the metadata you share is the service name, service signature, display name, and service comments. Users of IBM webMethods Cloud can then create integrations that invoke services defined in the applications.

When IBM webMethods Cloud executes a service, the on-premise Integration Server returns all the results to IBM webMethods Cloud. You can batch the results to limit the number of results returned to IBM webMethods Cloud. For more information, see the Batch Data field in Defining Applications.

After you create applications, you upload them to IBM webMethods Cloud. If the application changes on the on-premise Integration Server, you must upload the application again for the changes to be replicated to IBM webMethods Cloud.

When you upload applications to the IBM webMethods Cloud server, you associate one or more accounts that the application can use to access services on the on-premise Integration Server. If the account associated with an application changes, you can upload the account to the IBM webMethods Cloud server without having to upload the application. For more information about uploading accounts, see Uploading Accounts to IBM webMethods Cloud .

When IBM webMethods Cloud application invokes a service on an on-premise Integration Server, IBM webMethods Cloud shares a root context ID for the service invocation with the on-premise Integration Server. The root context ID helps to connect related entries from different logs. The on-premise Integration Serveruses the same root context ID, which helps to improve debugging and tracing for the service.