Release 10.1A: OpenEdge Development:
Progress Dynamics Web Development Guide

Configuring the WebSpeed Broker and Agents

Before configuring your WebSpeed Broker and Agents, you should verify your session setup. See the "ICFWS session" section. Also, you should configure the ICFWS session so that the Progress Dynamics Agents can connect to an application database. See the "Adding a database to ICFWS as a session service" section.

To develop or deploy Progress Dynamics browser-based applications, you must set up a Progress Dynamics version of the WebSpeed Broker and Agents. Installation of OpenEdge® Studio creates a default Broker (called wsdynamics1) and Agents. You can use the default Broker or you can create your own, as described in this section.

Note: Although Progress Dynamics uses most of the standard WebSpeed components, the Agent is quite different from the standard WebSpeed Agent. The Progress Dynamics version of the WebSpeed Agent is actually comprised of managers that interact with the Repository and with the application database. For more information, see Chapter 2, " Progress Dynamics Web Architecture."

The following procedure describes how to use the Progress Explorer tool to configure and start the Progress Dynamics Broker and Agents. If you prefer (or if you are working from a UNIX system), you can accomplish the same task by manually editing your ubroker.properties file. For more information about Progress Explorer and about editing the ubroker.properties file, see OpenEdge Getting Started: Installation and Configuration .

To configure and start the Progress Dynamics Broker:

Make sure that your OpenEdge Release 10 AdminServer is running. (Progress Explorer requires a running AdminServer.)
Start Progress Explorer.

Select Progress Explorer Tool from the OpenEdge folder on your Start menu.

Connect Progress Explorer to the local host or to the machine that will run the Progress Dynamics Broker.
Right-click on the WebSpeed node and select New from the pop-up menu, as shown:



The New Object dialog box appears.

Type a name for your Broker, then choose OK. The following window shows an entry for a new Broker named wsdynamics1:



Right-click on the new Progress Dynamics Broker name in the tree view and select Properties from the pop-up menu. The following window shows the selection of a Broker named wsdynamics1:



Note: The following steps indicate the property settings that you might need to change. You can accept the defaults for properties that are not mentioned.
Select the General node under Broker. Set the working directory and port number, then, choose OK.

The Working Directory text box contains a variable (@{WorkPath}) that points to the work directory that you specified during OpenEdge installation. Change this if you are using a different directory for Progress Dynamics work.

Enter any port number that is not in use on your system.

The following figure shows an example of a completed Broker Properties dialog box:



Select the Logging Setting node under Broker. Type the path for your Broker’s log file, then choose OK.

The following window shows a log file specified at the top level of the work directory:



Note: If you are debugging Broker problems, change the logging level from Terse to Verbose. However, change the logging level back to Terse after you resolve the problems. The Verbose mode creates very large log files.
Select the General node under Agent. Edit the Agent startup parameter and PROPATH fields.

You must specify the ICFWS Session Type by adding -icfparam ICFSESSTYPE=ICFWS to the Agent startup parameters field.

As an alternative to entering parameters here, you can create a parameter (.pf) file, which is usually located in the top level of your installation directory. Use the following syntax to specify a parameter file in the Agent startup parameters field:

-pf filename.pf

The following example shows the contents of a typical parameter file for a Progress Dynamics Agent:

/* wsdynamics.pf */ -p            web\objects\web-disp.p -inp          18000                   # max-statement-length -mmax         65534                   # max-r-code-memory -tok          1600                    # max-tokens -icfparam ICFSESSTYPE=ICFWS,ICFCONFIG=install_dir\tty\dynamics\icfconfig.xml -debugalert -weblogerror

Note: Replace install_dir with the pathname of your Progress Dynamics installation directory.

You must precede the default PROPATH setting (@{WinChar Startup\PROPATH}) with entries similar to the following example:

.; @{\SOFTWARE\PSC\PROGRESS\10.0B\Startup\DLC}\tty\dynamics; @{\SOFTWARE\PSC\PROGRESS\10.0B\Startup\DLC}\tty; @{\SOFTWARE\PSC\PROGRESS\10.0B\Startup\DLC}; @{\SOFTWARE\PSC\PROGRESS\10.0B\Startup\DLC}\src;

You enter PROPATH settings on a single line. The settings in the previous example are separated by returns only because a single line would not fit on the page.

Note: These PROPATH settings use a registry key (@{\SOFTWARE\PSC\PROGRESS\10.0B\Startup\DLC}) to form the first part of the pathname. Instead of using the registry key syntax, you can specify the actual pathnames (for example, C:\Program Files\Progress\OpenEdge\tty).
Set Agent application mode to Development if the Agent runs in a development environment, or to Production if the Agent runs in a deployment environment.

The following window shows an example of general settings for a Progress Dynamics Agent:



Choose OK.
Select the Logging Setting node under Agent. Enter the path for your Agents’s log file, then choose OK. The following window shows a log file specified at the top level of the work directory:



Note: If you are debugging Agent problems, change the logging level from Terse to Verbose. However, change the logging level back to Terse after you resolve the problems. The Verbose mode creates very large log files.
Select the Environment Variables node and enable the appropriate variables. The following window shows some common settings:



In the preceding example:

LOG_PATH specifies a directory (either a full pathname or a path relative to your Progress work directory) where log files will be written. Note that the Broker will not create the logging directory. You must create it if it does not already exist.
LOG_TYPES specifies what types of messages to log. In this case, the asterisk (*) indicates that all messages will be logged.
STATE_AWARE_ENABLED specifies whether or not to load state-aware enabling code into memory. The default is yes. However, you can improve performance if all of your Web applications are stateless (which is the case for Progress Dynamics Web applications) by setting this variable to no.
Note: STATE_AWARE_ENABLED does not automatically make Web applications run in the state-aware mode. It merely enables Agents to handle applications that are already written to be state-aware.

For more information on environment variables, choose the Help button in the Environment Variables Properties dialog box. The online help describes how to create and use variables. It also contains a list of the predefined variables and describes their use.

Start your Progress Dynamics Broker.

You can start the Broker with Progress Explorer or with the wtbman command. See OpenEdge Getting Started: WebSpeed Essentials for more information.

Notes: Depending on which OpenEdge products you have installed on your system, you might exceed the number of database connections allowed by your license. If you exceed the number of database connections allowed by your license, you will see a database connection error message when you try to start the Broker. To bypass this situation, reduce the number of Agents started by the Broker. Also, shut down any databases that are not being used.

For more information about database connection limitations, see OpenEdge Getting Started: Installation and Configuration . For more information about reducing the number of running Agents, see OpenEdge Getting Started: WebSpeed Essentials .