Configuration of Application Designer

This parameter points to the directory location of the web application - if you are using it in design time mode. During design time, Application Designer needs to know this file location in order to correctly place generated page files and other information. At runtime, especially if running the Application Designer web application in a clustered application server scenario, this parameter should be wiped out. For further information, see the section Design Time Mode and Runtime Mode.

The parameter can either be set to a directory name (for example, c:/cisinstall/tomcat/webapps/cis/) or to the parameter REALPATH.

REALPATH is dynamically interpreted at runtime. The name is internally requested by using the getRealpath() method of the servlet context.

Caution:
The above mentioned method is not supported by all servlet containers, it is only supported by the servlet containers that explicitly deploy into the file system (such as Tomcat, Jetty and IBM Websphere).

This parameter points to the directory to which log information is written. Take care in a clustered scenario that the directory is not set to a fixed directory value: the directory may not be available on each cluster node.

You can use the REALPATH parameter and you can specify the log location relative to the directory (for example, REALPATH/log).

You can specify TEMP to indicate that the log is written to a temporary directory that every servlet container must provide as part of the servlet specification. When using TEMP, your application is clusterable - the application server will tell Application Designer for each node where to store log information.

There is a second parameter influencing the log: this parameter is located in the file cisconfig.xml, its name is startmonitoringthread. The Application Designer log file is only written if this parameter is set to "true". Reason: the log is not directly written to the log file but is always buffered in memory first. The monitoring thread is started every 5 seconds and writes the buffered data to the file system. If the startmonitoringthread is not started, the log is automatically written to the logging that is provided by the servlet container. (Internally, the servlet context's log method is used.) The same will happen if you wipe out the CISLOG section from the web.xml file. In this case, Application Designer will use the log interface provided by the servlet context for writing log information.

Default: true.

Defines how Application Designer handles the animation of controls. There are several controls that can be rendered in an animated way and in a standard way.

Setting this parameter to "false" can help to improve performance, especially if you are not using the newest hardware.

Values: true/false.

Default: false.

Defines how Application Designer handles it if the application behind an Application Designer page throws an error.

By default (false), the browser switches to an error screen. In the screen, the user can only abort the current function. This is the default way in which any kind of inconsistency is automatically omitted.

When you set browserpopuponerror to "true", the browser opens a pop-up window in which the error is output. This setting should only be used during development because it may cause inconsistencies in the application.

Values: true/false.

Default: false.

By default, client-side error messages are displayed as pop-ups.

When you set this parameter to "true", client-side error messages are displayed in the status bar.

Values: true/false.

Default: 300.

Defines the maximum number of items in a grid after which the framework automatically switches from client-side scrolling to server-side scrolling. See also the description of onloadbehaviour="collectionorblock" in Setting the Client-Side Loading Behavior in Layout Elements.

Default: false.

Internally, Application Designer does not require HTTP session management that is provided by the servlet container. Some application servers (especially in clustered scenarios in which Application Designer runs in several nodes) require an explicit HTTP session ID to be used in order to route requests from a browser client always to the right application server node in the cluster. Set createhttpsession to "true" in this case.

Values: true/false.

Default: false.

A log is written permanently into Application Designer's log directory. When debugmode is set to "true", a lot of information which normally is not required is written to the log.

Be aware that you can also set the debug mode dynamically within your running system. Application Designer provides a monitoring tool in which you can switch the debug mode on and off.

Values: true/false.

You can set your own default style sheet for your entire application. For example:

../cis/styles/MY_STYLE.css

Default: en (English).

Defines the language that is to be used by default when starting Application Designer. If not set, "en" is used. See Multi Language Management for detailed information on using different languages with Application Designer.

By default, Application Designer uses an own class loader for accessing adapter classes at design time. (You can switch this off by specifying useownclassloader="false".)

With the designtimeclassloader, you can explicitly select a class loader class that Application Designer is to use. This allows you to use class loaders that offer special functions such as reading encrypted class files.

Value: the name of a class loader class.

Default: true.

By default, the server sends all required responses at once to the client, even if different adapters are involved.

If set to "false", a separate data transfer occurs for each involved adapter.

In case of an unhandled application error, the Application Designer runtime navigates to an error page. The class name specified in errorreactionadapter is the Java adapter for this error page.

If an error reaction adapter is not specified, a default adapter is used which shows the error's stack trace.

The Application Designer framework contains a second error reaction adapter with the class name com.softwareag.cis.server.SecureErrorReactionAdapter. For security reasons, this adapter does not show a stack trace but only an error message.

You can write your own error reaction adapter and create your own error page. An error reaction adapter must implement one of the interfaces com.softwareag.cis.server.ISecureErrorReactionAdapter or com.softwareag.cis.server.IErrorReactionAdapter. For more information, see the corresponding Java documentation.

Default: false.

Set this parameter to "true" in order to right-align text within the FIELD control when using the data type int, long or float.

Values: true/false.

Default: false.

By default, during a flush event the adapter gets as focus information the input control that received the focus. Set this parameter to "true" if during a flush event your application relies on getting as focus information the input control that lost the focus.

For Natural applications this means: By default, the Natural system variable *CURS-FIELD contains during the flush event the value of the Natural system function POS for the input control that received the focus.

Values: true/false.

Default: 3.

Each page in the browser client runs inside a surrounding page. This surrounding page offers a couple of internal functions, one of them to buffer contained Application Designer pages: if a user opens the first page and then navigates to a second page, the first page is internally kept inside a frame buffer. If returning to the first page later on, the browser does not have to build up the first page from scratch but just switches to the buffered page.

The framebuffersize defines the number of buffered pages. Increasing the framebuffersize means that more resources are used on the client (browser) side. When changing this value, you should test the memory consumption on the client side before rolling out the change to productively running implementations.

Value: integer number.

Default: EWI.

Defines the message types that are to be logged. Values:

E (error)
W (warning)
I (information)
D (debug)

You can specify any combination of message types by concatenating the message types.

Example: "EW" logs all error and warning messages. "EWI" additionally logs information messages.

Caution:
When having set debugmode to "true", the loglevel filter is automatically bypassed and all messages are logged. debugmode is stronger than loglevel.

Default: false.

If this parameter is set to "true", all Application Designer log information is also output to the command screen from which you started Application Designer. This parameter should only be set to "true" if running in development mode.

Values: true/false.

Default: 100.

The FIELD control provides for a predefined pop-up method openIdValueComboOrPopup. Depending on the size of the list of valid values, the list is either shown in a combo box or in a pop-up. Use this parameter to control the maximum number of entries that are to be shown in the combo box.

Value: integer number.

Default: -1 (unlimited).

The maximum number of workplace activities in a workplace application. For reactions when the maximum number is reached, see Customizing the MFWPFUNCTIONS Behavior in Working with Pages.

Internally, Application Designer uses an interface to retrieve the translation information for a certain text ID and a certain language. A default implementation is available that stores the corresponding language information in files that are part of the web application. You can build your own multi language manager - by using the com.softwareag.cis.multilanguage.IMLManager interface - in case you already have an existing framework for multi language management.

Value: the name of the class that supports Application Designer's multi language interface.

Default: false.

Set this parameter to "true" if your Natural program only allows Latin upper-case characters. This is the case, for example, if your Natural program uses the Hebrew codepage CP803.

Important:
Set the parameter natuppercase="true" before you implement your main program with Natural for Ajax. If you set this parameter after the implemention, you will have to change all Latin lower-case characters to upper-case manually.

Values: true/false.

Application Designer accesses a certain URL when the user presses F1 on certain controls (for example, fields, check boxes and others). Application Designer transfers a corresponding help ID that is defined with the control into a URL and opens this URL in a pop-up window. If you have your own mechanisms for defining this URL, you can implement a corresponding Application Designer Java interface (com.softwareag.cis.onlinehelp.IOHManager).

Value: the name of the interface.

Default: false.

If a client sends an HTTP request, it is determined for the first request from which client this request is coming. This operation is sometimes quite expensive. For this reason, you can switch it off. If switched off, there is no disadvantage in normal operation, besides in the monitoring tool you cannot identify which session belongs to which client.

Values: true/false.

Application Designer allows to pass each value that is input by the user through an explicit data converter on the server side, prior to passing this value to the application. In the data converter, you can implement certain security checks, for example, you can prevent users from inputting string sequences containing inline JavaScript or SQL scripting. See the interface com.softwareag.cis.server.IRequestDataConverter for more information. See also Security Aspects in the Special Development Topics.

Value: name of a class that implements the interface com.softwareag.cis.server.IRequestDataConverter.

Default: false.

When set to true, the status bar messages are reset in the browser before a server roundtrip is done.

Values: true/false.

Default: true.

On start of each page request processing, the Application Designer runtime calls the method Thread.setName with the current session ID (default).

You can set this parameter to "false" to instruct the Application Designer runtime not to touch the thread's name.

Values: true/false.

Default: 3600 (1 hour).

Application Designer sessions are timed out according to the value defined with this parameter. This is the definition of the timeout phase in seconds. By default, 3600 is defined in the configuration file. If no parameter is specified in the configuration file, 7200 is used.

Value: integer number.

Default: true.

If set to "true", a monitoring thread is opened which wakes up every 5 seconds. The thread performs the following activities:

1. It initiates a garbage collection periodically (every two minutes).

2. It writes all log information into a log file (every five seconds).

3. It calls the clean up of sessions which are timed out (every two minutes)

What happens if the monitoring thread is not started?

1. No garbage collection will be triggered by Application Designer. This is then the task of the servlet container around.

2. The log is not automatically written to the file location specified in the web.xml file, but is written to the servlet container's logging.

3. Timing out sessions is not done every two minutes but every thousand requests.

Caution:
Some servlet containers do not allow to let the web application start new threads (for example, the Sun reference implementations do so). For these containers, the parameter must be set to "false".

Values: true/false.

Default: false.

If you set this parameter to "true", no focus management in the client will be done after a server round trip. This means: The focus will not be set to focus-requesting controls such as "EDIT" fields with "ERROR" status after a server round trip.

Usually, you do not set this parameter. If you need to suppress focus management for specific server round trips, you usually do this from within your adapter code for these specific server round trips. See also the focusmgtprop in the NATPAGE control. Only set this parameter to "true" if your application needs to do it vice versa: Suppress focus mangement for nearly all server round trips and only explicitly activate focus management for some specific server round trips from within your adapter code.

Values: true/false.

Default: false.

Set this parameter to "true" in case you are using right-aligned FIELD controls with value help. This will avoid overlapping of the right-aligned text and the corresponding drop-down icon.

Values: true/false.

Default: false.

If set to "true", the HTML attribute generated for the test tool IDs has the name "testtoolid". Otherwise, the name is "data-testtoolid". See also the information on standards mode and HTML5 in the Natural for Ajax documentation.

Default: UTF-8.

By default, Application Designer reads and writes text files in UTF-8 format. You can tell Application Designer to use a different format (for example, for writing XML layout definitions). But be very careful and very aware of what you are doing.

See also Unicode in the Multi Language Management documentation.

When the browser back button is pressed, in some cases the page is not synchronized with the server anymore and the session has to be closed. In these cases a default page is displayed. Instead of this default page you can define a URL to a custom page.

Value: the URL of the page that is to be shown instead of the default page.

When Application Designer times out a session (see the sessiontimeout parameter) and the user tries to continue to work with the session, a page will be displayed inside the user's browser, indicating that a timeout happened with the user's session. By default, this page is an Application Designer page that you might not want to show to your application users.

Value: the URL of the page that is to be shown instead of the default page.

Default: false.

Set this parameter to "true" in order to show status messages as message pop-ups.

Values: true/false.

Default: true.

If set to "true", Application Designer uses its own class loader to load application classes.

This parameter may be set to "false" in certain environments, for example, if you use Application Designer inside an environment which requires all application classes to run in the environment's own class loader environment.

Caution:
The Application Designer class loader automatically searches for classes in certain directories (<project>/appclasses/classes and <project>/appclasses/lib). If you do not use the Application Designer class loader, you have to set up your environment accordingly.

Values: true/false.

You can specify your own keys to open the value help pop-up and/or combo box in a FIELD control. The keys are specified in the same way as hot keys. Example:

valuehelpkeys = "ctrl-65;ctrl-alt-66"

You can specify hot keys with which you can switch back and forth between the activities in a workplace.

The first entry defines the key for forward switching and the second entry defines the key for backward switching. The following example defines CTRL page up and CTRL page down as corresponding hotkeys:

workplacehotkeys = "ctrl-34;ctrl-33"

This parameter defines the file name of the class which implements the com.softwareag.cis.xmldata.IXMLDataManager interface. You can specify an own class here. The com.softwareag.cis.xmldata.XMLDataManagerFactory creates an instance using a constructor without any parameter.

Default: true.

Between the browser and the server, data content is exchanged. By default, Application Designer zips the content before sending a response from the server to the browser client.

Sometimes you may want to actually "see" what is being sent (maybe you have a test tool that captures the HTTP protocol). Set zipcontent to "false" if you do not want Application Designer to zip the data content returned to the client.

Values: true/false.