I’m a bit lost setting up my BIWS connections dynamically so they will work when I migrate my dashboard XLF file through our DEVELOPMENT, TEST and PROD environment.
When I use LiveOffice I just use …/…/…/dswsbobje/services/session as a relatiev session URL and everything works fine.
But how to set this dynamically with the web services connections?
If I look in DataManager I can see 2 URL parts:
Both of the above URL’s have the servername hard coded in it.
Do I just need to change the first part of both URL’s so they look like: …/…/…/dswsbobje/qaawsservices/biws?WSDL=1&cuid=AQ8MJKlVgGZNuqealX.G1XQ
This is actually something I’ve been thinking about recently.
I’m pretty sure the relative paths don’t work. I’d love to be proven wrong on that, but I don’t see how they could work. A standalone SWF doesn’t know which environment it’s in, after all.
I have noticed that the Web Service URL can be keyed to a cell. So you could pass the environment variable into the dashboard (using a Flash variable?), have a series of cells that marry up the server name based on the environment variable and the rest of the URL based on the connection, then the Web Service URL reads from that. This is my best guess as to the intent, but I haven’t even fully thought it through, let alone tested it.
Currently, we simply manually change the server name in the Web Service URL as part of the migration process. So long as the web service has been migrated with the same CUID, it will find it in the new environment.
(Note, do NOT change the server name in the WSDL URL. This will drop the connection information and require a re-import and re-assignment of all the properties. Obviously, this invalidates your testing.)
Web Service URL
http://TESTSERVER/dswsbobje/qaawsservices/queryasaservice?&cuid=AQ8MJKlVgGZNuqealX.G1XQ&authType=secEnterprise&locale=nl_NL&timeout=60&ConvertAnyType=true
Yup. That is, assuming that all the links in the chain preserve their CUIDs during migration. The WSDL link brings in the structure of the web service. Since that structure shouldn’t change from one environment to another, you don’t need to update the WSDL. The web service URL is what then fetches the data to fill out the XML structure and serve it to the dashboard.
It seems to work independ on which server you publish the SWF!
The only drawback is that your Preview mode (in xcelsius full client tool) is not working any more, but it’s easy to put the http://[SERVERNAME] in front of it and then all is well again in your preview mode.
The other thing I found out that transfering the BIWS from DEV-CMS (source) to TEST-CMS (destination) is also a bit quircky…
you need to check the IMPORT APPLICATION FOLDERS AND OBJECTS (sub category for IMPORT FOLDERS AND OBJECTS ) in the Import Wizard
Then the BIWS (visible in the Qaaws section in CMC) are also transferred to your destination system
Funny thing is that when you look into the details of the transferred BIWS in your destination system, they still refer to the ‘old’ source system, but when called in the SWF on your destination system they are getting the data through the destination properties (if you set the web service url like my example above)
Though, if it doesn’t work in Preview mode, I’m going to guess that it doesn’t work for standalone SWF files. Which makes it less useful for my purposes.
Hence the web service url box is binded to a excel cell so it’s easy to create a mechanism which will let you switch to URL’s with or without the servername making it easy to still get some results in the preview mode and easily export your dynamic SWF
(BOB member since 2004-11-10)