Release 10.1A: OpenEdge Deployment:
WebClient Applications

Customizing a deployment configuration with the WebClient Deployment Packager

Users of your application might have specific requirements for how it is deployed. Often you cannot be aware of these requirements at the time that you generate the .prowcapc file. Moreover, even if custom requirements are known, maintaining separate development streams to support the deployment needs of multiple users can be burdensome and error-prone. The WebClient Deployment Packager enables you to address this problem without changing the .wcp project file and regenerating the entire application. With the Deployment Packager, you can:

Extract deployment information from an existing .prowcapc file.
Modify the deployment information and save the changes to a file referred to as a custom deployment configuration. This file has a .wcd extension and the same name as the .prowcapc file (for example, a custom deployment configuration extracted from sportspro.prowcapc is stored as sportspro.wcd).
Generate a new.prowcapc file incorporating the changes made to the .wcd file.

Examples illustrating the use of the Deployment Packager include:

An application provider has multiple customers, each with specific custom requirements for starting the application with a different code page or location-specific language.
An application provider or a customer’s in-house programmer develops and tests an application with references to URLs and connection information that are specific to the development environment. When it is time to deploy the application, it is necessary to change these references in accordance with the production environment.
An application provider develops the application and delivers it to a customer, to be hosted on the customer’s Web site. The deployment configuration must be tailored to the customer’s environment.

In these and similar situations, after the initial generation of the .prowcapc file with the WebClient Application Assembler, the developer or customer can simply use the Deployment Packager to modify the configuration details as required. OpenEdge provides a standalone Deployment Packager executable that application providers can make available to customers, enabling them to customize their own configurations.