Web Browser Request Example
Through Info*Engine, the information from these two disparate systems can be combined and displayed to the user at the same time. The first step is to author a JSP page that uses Info*Engine to request this information and then display the requested items in side-by-side frames within a browser window. Usually, this JSP page resides in the directory assigned to Info*Engine JSP pages. To display the page, the user includes the assigned Info*Engine application URL prefix in the URL. For example, assume the following:
• The web page is named bill_of_materials.jsp.
• The web server is named Wsvr1.
• The Info*Engine URL prefix that identifies where JSP pages reside is Windchill.
To initiate the request for the bill_of_materials JSP page, a user sends the following URL using HTTP:
http://Wsvr1/Windchill/bill_of_materials.jsp
Because the URL contains the Windchill URL prefix, the web server passes the URL on to the JSP engine. The JSP engine then finds and processes the JSP page. In this example, the JSP page contains standard JSP and HTML tags that format the page to display the bill of material data in side-by-side frames.
In addition to the standard tags, the JSP page contains custom Info*Engine tags that identify requests for the data that will fill out the bills of material. The custom tags also provide the information that formats the data that is returned from the requests. When the JSP engine encounters the custom tags, it passes these tags off to the SAK for processing.
When the SAK processes the custom tags on the JSP page, it performs the following tasks:
• Locates the information needed to access any requested applications (for example, the PDM or ERP system).
• Obtains any additional information that is required to retrieve, manipulate, and display the requested data.
• Identifies any authentication requirements (who can or cannot access the information requested) if you set up custom tags to do so.
To obtain the data, the SAK sends requests through the Info*Engine protocol to the appropriate Info*Engine adapters. After the appropriate PDM and ERP applications are located, the requested EBOM and MBOM data is retrieved and returned to the SAK. The SAK maintains the data as two separate groups in an internal, virtual database (VDB).
Using Info*Engine custom tags that the author has included in the JSP page, the data returned in these two groups is manipulated and formatted into standard HTML-encoded text. Then, the SAK returns the encoded text to the JSP engine. The JSP engine passes the text back to the web server, which passes it back to the user’s browser to be displayed. As described earlier in this example, the display shows the data in the side-by-side frames that were set up for the EBOM and MBOM comparison originally requested by the user.