HTTP Routing Support
The OpenROAD HTTP routing option lets you use HTTP as an alternative to DCOM when communicating with the OpenROAD server. When you specify http as the routing parameter in the RemoteServer Initiate method, that RemoteServer instance transforms its normal DCOM calls into HTTP messages and posts them to the HTTP URL specified in the location parameter.
This requires the web server application listening at that URL to be able to recognize those HTTP messages and to transform them back into DCOM calls to the OpenROAD Server, and then transform the DCOM responses into HTTP response messages.
This specialized web server application is named a gatekeeper because it serves two crucial functions:
• Message transformation—The gatekeeper application converts HTTP requests into DCOM calls, and converts DCOM return values into HTTP responses.
• Security—The gatekeeper application decides which clients are allowed to make calls, and which 4GL SCPs they are permitted to call.
The message transformation process is the same for all applications, and this release provides generic code that handles this. However, the security decisions are unique to each organization and each application, so this release provides only examples and a starting template. Developers must customize the gatekeeper application to meet the security requirements of their organization for each application.