Progress
Open Client
Developer’s Guide


Connecting Over the Internet

When you distribute your application over the Internet, you can connect to an AppServer using either the HTTP or HTTPS protocol. Using HTTP/S allows clients to communicate through firewalls and optionally send secure encrypted data transmissions.

Connecting Using the HTTP Protocol

The HTTP protocol specifies that Progress use HTTP to connect the client to the AppServer indirectly through a Web server running the AppServer Internet Adapter (AIA).

The following shows the AppServer URL syntax for the HTTP protocol:

SYNTAX
http://[user-id[:password]@]web-server-host[:web-server-port]
/aia-path?AppService=service-name 

Connecting Using the HTTPS Protocol

The HTTPS protocol specifies that Progress is to use HTTPS to connect the client to the AppServer through a Web server running AIA. HTTPS works just like HTTP except that it encrypts all communications between the client and AppServer using SSL.

The following shows the AppServer URL syntax for the HTTPS protocol:

SYNTAX
https://[user-id[:password]@]web-server-host[:web-server-port]
/aia-path?AppService=service-name 

user-id

User account name to use to connect to a Web server that hosts AIA.

password

Password to use with the user-id.

web-server-host

TCP/IP host address of the Web server that hosts AIA.

web-server-port

TCP/IP port address of the Web server that hosts the AIA. The default port is 80 for HTTP and 443 for HTTPS.

aia-path

URL path on the Web server where AIA is installed. The aia-path identifies the virtual path and servlet name used to invoke the JSE and AIA and must include the following information:

service-name

Name of the Progress service that supports the application. The service-name identifies the application service to which the AIA connects. If you do not specify an application service, the AIA uses the default application service registered with ProxyGen.

The following shows some examples of the AppServer URL format where external/aia1 is the path to the AIA:

http://aia.acme.com/external/aia1?AppService=Partners 
http://aia.acme.com:2045/external/aia1?AppService=Partners 
http://jones@aia.acme.com/external/aia1?AppService=Partners 
http://jones:brownie@aia.acme.com/external/aia1?AppService=Partners 

During the connection process, if Progress determines that the client application is attempting to connect to a secure Web server and that the httpsEnabled property is enabled, the protocol is automatically converted to HTTPS.

NOTE: Converting the connection to HTTPS requires that the client be redirected to the port on which the Web server is listening for HTTPS connections. This port is specified using the secure-port property for an AIA instance. For more information, see the Progress Version 9 Product Update Bulletin .


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