The In Sequence step, which you configure to manipulate the request messages. This step can include the following sub-steps:

The Entry Step (required), which specifies the protocol (HTTP or HTTPS) of the requests that the virtual service will accept, and for REST services it also specifies the HTTP methods that the virtual service should be allowed to perform on a REST resource.

The Transform step (optional), which performs an XSLT message transformation on the request message before the virtual service submits it to the native service.

The Invoke IS Service step (optional), which pre-processes the request message before the virtual service submits it to the native service.

The Routing Rule step (required), which specifies how the virtual service will route the requests to the native service endpoint. There are four ways to route HTTP or HTTPS requests:

Straight Through routing (to route requests directly to the native service endpoint).

Context-Based routing (to route specific types of messages to specific endpoints according to context-based routing rules).

Content-Based routing (to route specific types of messages to specific endpoints based on specific values that appear in the request message).

Load Balancing routing (to distribute requests among multiple endpoints).

The service's Out Sequence step (optional), which you configure to manipulate the response messages. This step can include the following sub-steps:

The Transform step (optional), which specifies how the response message from the native service provider is to be transformed before the virtual service returns it to the consuming application.

The Invoke IS Service step step (optional), which pre-processes the response message before the virtual service returns it to the consuming application.

The service's Error Sequence step (required). CloudStreams returns a default fault response to the consuming application, which you can customize with context variables. This fault response is used for faults returned by the native service provider as well as faults returned by internal CloudStreams exceptions (policy violation errors, cloud connection errors and cloud connector service errors). In addition, you can:

Choose whether or not to send the native service provider's service fault content, or just send the response message.

Invoke IS services to pre-process or post-process the error messages.