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HUD   >   Program Offices   >   Housing   >   Single Family   >   Housing Counselors   >   Client Management System Requirement Guidance for Housing Counseling Agencies   >   HUD Housing Counseling CMS Technical Notes

20 May 2011
ARM Web Service 11.3.1.1 Release Announcement

The newest release of the ARM Web Service is available on the Pilot Server as of May 17, 2011. It is anticipated that this release will be available on Production on May 31, 2011.  This is a minor release and contains small corrections. No changes are necessary to your XML files. Version 3.1 and 4.0 databags are still supported. Here is a summary of the changes.

 Changes to SDK

  1. Update referencevalues.txt with current values

 Changes to XML Schema

Modified the phone number with extension field to allow up to 5 digits for extension rather than requiring exactly 5 digits

  1.  Updated list of values for counseling service types to match actual reference values.
  2. Updated activity type id for Form 9902 to only have a value of 4, not 5.
  3. Updated language id values to match actual reference values. Two new languages added.
  4.  Updated Other Training Organization (otherTrainingOrg) values to match actual values stored in database.
  5. Added value of 'N' for N/A to indicate that there is no loan for Loan Indicator Type. Previously only 'F' and 'S' were accepted values.

Changes to Web Service Behavior

  1. Added additional reference values for the following reference groups:
    • Languages
    • Counseling Service Types

Removed retrieval of reference values no longer used by ARM.

5 May 2011
ARM Web Service 11.3.1.0 Release Announcement

The newest release of the ARM Web Service is now available on the Pilot Server as of May 2, 2011. It is anticipated that this release will be available on Production on May 20, 2011.  This is a minor release and contains small corrections. No changes are necessary to your XML files. Version 3.1 and 4.0 databags are still supported. Here is a summary of the changes.

 Changes to SDK
1. Update referencevalues.txt with current values
 
Changes to XML Schema
1. Modified phone number with extension field to allow up to 5 digits for extension rather than requiring exactly 5 digits.
2. Updated list of values for counseling service types to match actual reference values.
3. Updated activity type id for Form 9902 to only have a value of 4, not 5.
4. Updated language id values to match actual reference values. Two new languages added.
5. Updated Other Training Organization (otherTrainingOrg) values to match actual values stored in database.
6. Added value of 'N' for N/A to indicate that there is no loan for Loan Indicator Type. Previously only 'F' and 'S' were accepted values.

Changes to Web Service Behavior
 1. Added additional reference values for the following reference groups:
    Languages
    Counseling Service Types
2. Removed retrieval of reference values no longer used by ARM.
 

15 December 2010
ARM Web Service 11.0.0.0 Release Announcement
 

We are pleased to announce the next version of the ARM Web Service, 11.0.0.0, is now available for use on the Production Server as of Tuesday December 14th. This is a major release containing the new 4.0 databag along with a major shift in the processing model of submission files. However, please be aware that support for the 3.0 and 3.1 databags will continue and there are no interface changes to 3.0 or 3.1 schema. The current schedule is for 3.0 to be supported through Spring 2011 and 3.1 to be supported through the end of 2011 fiscal year. As always, please contact us with any questions or concerns.

3.0 and 3.1 Databag Changes

Changes to ARM SDK

  1. NONE
Changes to XML Schema
  1. NONE
Changes to Web Service Interface
  1. NONE
Changes to Web Service Behavior
  1. Effective with this release, Group Sessions and Attendees are unique across ALL reporting periods. While they are relevant to the Form 9902 since Section 6 corresponds to the number of group sessions held and the corresponding attendees, the same Attendee can attend multiple group sessions not only within the same reporting period, but also within the same year. Now ARM can accurately represent this business rule. Please note that for 3.1 submissions, these Attendees will need to share information that in reality may be different from one session to the next, and the demographics may change, but we only keep the most current data. (NOTE: This will be corrected in 4.0 ? see below)
  2. Now when a submission is in error, none of the changes will be applied to the data store. Currently, all parts of the submission successfully processed up to the section which incurred the error, persisted. This can cause an Agency?s data to get in an inconsistent state. This problem has been corrected.
4.0 Databag Release Notes

Changes to XML Schema There are now 4 different XML databags, one for each datamap section. The new files are listed below along with the root elements that they contain and a high level description of the other changes applied.

  1. agency_profile_1_0.databag
  • AgencyProfileData
  1. A number of fields have been removed as they were duplicated in submissionHeader. Namely, fiscal_year, agc_hcs_id, agc_cms_type.
  2. agc_name was removed all together.
  3. All agency address elements were renamed to start with an agc_physical prefix.
  4. A new set of fields was added with an agc_mailing prefix to capture an agency mailing address.
  5. alternate_phone_nbr was renamed to agc_toll_free_phone_nbr.
  6. agc_counselin_budget_amt was renamed to agc_counseling_budget_amount.
  7. agency_counseling_methods/counseling_method group added. Each agency should specify all the counseling service types offered.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  • Identical web service is also available on production environment.

    Changes to Web Service Behavior

     

    1. Updated behavior for client profile processing. As of this release, the Client_Counselor_ID specified in Client_Profile must correlate to an actual Counselor Profile for that agency, otherwise an error is returned. Previously, a submission with an invalid Client_Counselor_ID was allowed but this meant that we had no correlation between the actual Counselor and their Client(s). This does not mean that the Counselor data and Client data need to be sent together in the same submission ? as long as your Client_Counselor_ID refers to a Counselor provided in the same or earlier submission, it will be fine.

    9 June 2010
    ARM Web Service 10.7.1.0 Release

    This release provided performance improvement for processing the client profile portion of a submission. We should see an 80% performance improvement. Most of the changes were internal and had little to no impact on your development efforts. Please find the release notes below.

    Changes to Databag XML Schema

    1. The HECM_Certificate_ID value in Client_Profile MUST be numeric. This was previously not the case, however all submissions were using numeric values.
    2. The Client_ID_Num value in Client_Profile MUST be numeric. Again, this was not previously the case, however all submission were using numeric values.

    Changes to Web Service Interface
     

    1. WSDL now displays version number of ARM in a wsdl:documentation tag.
    2. ping now displays version number of ARM in its response.
    3. getReferenceGroupNames returns a set of reference group ids and their corresponding names. The reference IDs returned can be used in subsequent calls to getReference.

    Changes to Web Service Behavior
     

    1. Updated queries for inserting, deleting, and selecting client profile data to improve performance by 80%.

    26 April 2010
    ARM Web Service 10.6.0.0 Release of Glassfish Application Server Upgrade
     

    The release of ARM Web Service 10.6.0.0 upgraded our backend server to the latest Glassfish Application Server from an older version of the Sun ONE Application Server. This release was implemented on production server on 4/26/2010.

    This upgrade improves performance, reliability and stability of our web service. The connectivity issues experienced with the Sun ONE Application Server have been corrected in the latest Glassfish server. We had previously addressed this issue by adding support for compressed submissions - this feature will remain the same. We highly recommend to continue using the compressed submission method.

    The ARM Web Service 10.6.0.0 is now available on production and pilot systems. This was the first time that a pilot release was available prior to the production release. This benefited CMS vendors by allowing pilot testing before production release was rolled out.

    Most of the changes are internal to ARM interface and will not affect your submissions and processes in any matter. Please find the release notes below for information about what has changed.

    Changes to Web Service Interface
    1. Removed unused throwFault method.

    Changes to Housing Counseling System (HCS) Web Interface
    1. Corrected defect whereby ARM Submission Validation page displayed the status instead of the Agency HCS ID.

    Changes to Databag XML Schema
    1. Added validation of date fields so that the year must be meaningful and valid, namely between 19XX ? 20XX. This is the only change with potential impact if you have invalid dates in your submissions ? they will now fail whereas they previously passed.

    2. Modified dateTime schema definition to allow timestamps starting with 00 hour for 24-hour clock.

    Internal Changes to Web Service Behavior
    1. Updated logic to make sure that all Agency Names are stored in upper case.

    2. Updated submission tables to contain agc_profile_id for easier searching capability.

    3. Upgraded to Glassfish 2.1.1 from Sun One Application Server 8.2.

    4. Updated index for submission_log table to reflect new table structure.


    All CMS vendors are encouraged to test submissions against the pilot system. The latest SDK (1.30) is available for download on CMS Requirements Guidance web page. As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to ask.

     

    19 January 2010
    The large submission size limitation

    The current ARM Web Service has a known limitation when attempting to submit a XML file larger than 5 MB in size as an attachment to the SOAP message.

    The behavior of the system is as follows.

     

    • Submit your XML databag for processing to the ARM Web Service
    • After some period of time (around 2 ? 3 minutes), you may receive an error back to the effect of ?Connection reset by peer?.
      No submissionId is returned.

    The HTTP Preemptive Authentication must be turned on in your HTTP request in order to submit uncompressed data files up to 35 MB in size.

    If you are using SOAPUI, this is achieved by changing configuration as follows.

     

     

    • From File Menu, Select Preferences.
    • In soapUI Preferences dialog box, check the box labeled
      ?Authenticate Preemptively?.
      Text following checkbox is ?Adds authentication information to outgoing request.?
    • Select ?Ok?

    If you are using .NET, please follow in the recommendations outlined below to configure your client correctly.
     

    Implementing a WCF SOAP Client that uses Basic Authentication at first request.

    To increase transaction performance and to allow processing of larger volumes of data, you can submit compressed (zipped) files using the postSubmission method as described in the Interface Control Document (ICD). Compressed data files may be up to 35 MB in size which typically contains up to 150 MB of uncompressed data.

    As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please let us know and submit a ticket via the HUD National Help Desk at (888) 297-8689 or (202) 708-3300 and choose option 9.

    Tell the Help Desk specialist that you need assistance with application ARM (F11M) - Agency Reporting Module.

    Return to CMS Requirements Guidance web page.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

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