Renaming /sap/public for BSP applications running on WAS 6.20?

[Former Member]

/sap/PUBLIC is created by default on the 6.20 WAS, and BSP applications fetch mime objects from /sap/PUBLIC/bsp/sap/public -- is it possible to rename /sap/PUBLIC to something else, like /sap/MYPUBLIC?

[Former Member]

I have the exact same problem too.

After some digging it seems that this could be resolved using HTTPURLLOC via se16 on the WAS. Though the WAS 620 needs to be at a fairly high patch level.

Take a look at note: 750292 (BSP: URL Generation in a config of WebAS with Web Dispatcher) and check the attached word doc, plus 718696, 723705 for related issues and version requirements. NOTE: Web dispatcher is NOT a requirement.

The good news is you can still differentiate between direct ibtranet and requests via a proxy. However in this case the Host header needs preserved.

[eddy_declercq]

I wouldn't do that and go for making aliases. We did that successfully.

[Former Member]

An alias would probably work just as well. However, I'm not sure if it will solve the problem we're facing: we have a complex portal running behind a reverse-proxy. Through the portal users access applications on to WASs -- both of them have files referring to /sap/public/...

The problem is that since both are behind a reverse-proxy from the user's side all the requests are made to the same host, and the reverse-proxy has to figure out by looking at the URL to which server it should forward request. So in the case of the applications on the WAS it can't distinguish between one /sap/public and the other.

I'm no BSP programmer -- suppose an alias was created -- am I right to guess that all the references in the BSP files to /sap/public will need to be manually changes to /sap/<new alias>? or is there some way to do it automatically?

Thanks,

Alon.

[eddy_declercq]

Hi, we are also using a reverse proxy and there all different types of apps. (https or not, authentication or not). We've defined two subnodes under sap/public with all aliases in it. The aliases refer to the real apps under sap/bc/bsp/sap but with their own settings. As such you don't have to change anything in the BSPs itself, unless you've hard coded URLs.

All is done in the proxy conf.

[Former Member]

I don't think that'll solve the problem I'm facing. The applications already have different aliases and most of the redirection is done fine. The problem is that the HTMLB components call resources from /sap/public, and the resources are different between the servers (perhaps different version, or maybe customizations, I'm not sure) -- right now the reverse-proxy is configured to fetch /sap/public from one of the servers, so static HTMLB content like JavaScript CSS files is brought from one server to both applications (sitting on different servers) -- one of them has javascript exceptions which prevent it from working properly because of this.

So -- what I need is a way to differentiate the HTMLB content between the two servers on the URL level.

Creating an alias for the application will let me distinguish the applications, but the HTMLB components will still try to fetch content from /sap/public

[eddy_declercq]

Can't you filter things on the proxy itself like you do now? All the things that are different must not be directed to one single server.

[Former Member]

I think I didn't explain the problem well enough. Here's an example scenario we have:

Two BSP applications on two WASs. Both applications call, at some point, so a file named:

/sap/public/Design2002/something.js

(the name is just an example, of course) This file is called by the HTMLB components of the applications. Internally each application thinks it's calling this file from its own WAS, but form the reverse-proxy's point of view there's no way to tell to which server this request should be forwarded, since the URL is relative and looks the same for both applications (remember that the request comes from the browser side). That's why I'm looking for a way to make HTMLB on one of the servers reference files from a different path -- like /sap/public2/.... instead of the same path. There's no way to differentiate the files from the reverse-proxy if the path and filename are identical.

[Former Member]

Hello Alon,

could someone solve your issue yet? I understand the problem because we install such reverse-proxies. What we normally do at reverse-proxy site is using a secondary ip-address or (more interesting) an additonal tcp-port to get a different container. Renaming would be much easier on WAS-Site, anyway I think this must be supportable later.