An output template is a web document that is embedded with special codes (tags) that Integration Server processes. These tags instruct Integration Server to perform a specific action and substitute the result of that action in the web document. Typically, you use tags in output templates to insert service output values in web documents returned to clients.

Output templates are used most frequently to customize the HTML page that a service returns to a browser-based application. However, they can also be used to generate an XML document or any other formatted string. For example, you may have a service that retrieves a record from a relational database and uses an output template to format the record as an XML document or a comma-delimited record before returning it to the requester.

Output templates are optional. If a service has an output template assigned to it, the server automatically applies the template to the results of the service (that is, the contents of the pipeline) whenever that service is invoked by an HTTP client. If a service does not have an output template, the server simply returns the results of the service in the body of an HTML document, formatted as a two-column table.