Progress
on the Web
Hosting on a Web Server
If you deploy your application component files or external installer on a Web server, there are a number of other tasks that you must perform and considerations you must make. The following section provides information about:
Case Sensitivity on UNIX Web Servers
Web servers that use the UNIX operating system, such as Apache, are case sensitive. Therefore, the letter case of installation filenames on the Web server and those in your application configuration file must match or a run-time error will occur.
Executable Directories
Do not place a Web installer in an executable directory on your Web server. Otherwise, when a user’s browser accesses the installer executable, the installer attempts to execute on the Web server instead of downloading and executing on the user’s system. This results in a server run-time error.
You can prevent this on an iPlanet Web Server or Netscape Enterprise Server by setting the Web server to download all executable files referenced from a browser instead of executing them. For more information, visit the iPlanet Web site to read the article on setting your Web server to let users download executable files. Otherwise, see your Web server documentation for information on how to plan the content of your directories (or to create virtual directories) so they do not allow local execution of files referenced by the user’s browser.
Authentication Options on Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS)
If you are configuring Internet Information Server, select only the Basic (Clear Text) authentication option in the WWW Services Properties for the Web server. If the Windows NT Challenge/Response authentication option is selected, end users who are not running Internet Explorer receive an authentication dialog box that they cannot satisfy. This prevents them from starting an installation. As a result, end users can never run their application over the Web.
NOTE: Basic authentication uses a well known encryption algorithm for user names and passwords that provides minimal security.Configuring MIME Types for Your Web Server
When the user attempts to access the application, the Web page that you provide references the configuration file for the application. Before your user’s browser can open the configuration file using WebClient Initializer, it must recognize a MIME type for the configuration file. To accomplish this, you must configure your Web server to associate the configuration file extension with its MIME type.
The method used for configuring your Web server depends on the type of Web server you use. For each Web server, however, you must specify the extension and MIME type for the configuration file types, as follows:
The following sections provide instructions for configuring the MIME type on the Progress-supported Web servers.
NOTE: If an Internet Service Provider (ISP) hosts your Web installation, you must provide it with this configuration file MIME type information required to configure the Web server properly.Apache Web Server
To register the MIME types for all directories on the server, do one of the following:
If you are using a dedicated Web server, rehash/recycle to register this information.
iPlanet Web Server/Netscape Enterprise Server
On iPlanet/Netscape, follow these steps to register MIME types:
- Open the Administration Server.
- Select a server and choose the Manage button.
- Choose Preferences
Mime Types.
- Type application/progress-wcappcab for Content-Type.
- Type prowcapc for File Suffix.
- Choose the New Type button to register the new MIME type on the Web server.
- Complete the Administration Server steps to save and apply your changes so the Web server recognizes the new MIME type.
Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS)
The IIS server stores its MIME types in the Windows registry. You register the MIME type for the application configuration file using the
iis_wc.reg
registry file.You can find this file in the following location on the Progress installation CD.:
where Webinstall is the directory where you install your WebClient install images.
To merge the MIME type entries from this file into the registry and configure the Web server, follow these steps:
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