Process Platform Web Gateway Overview |
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The Process Platform Web Gateway is the HTTP interface of Process Platform. The Process Platform Web Gateway forwards Web requests to and receives responses from service groups. It functions as a bridge between the Web browser and the service groups that operate in Process Platform. Gateway is a Java object and is loaded as a Web server object in the Web server. Once it is loaded, the Gateway searches for specific service groups in Process Platform and passes the requests back and forth between the service groups and the Web browser.
Unlike any other Process Platform services like the service containers, the Process Platform Web Gateway is not a standalone Java process. It is hosted inside Web Server (Apache or IIS), and serves Process Platform service requests coming over HTTP.
The functions of the Process Platform Web Gateway are:
- Mapping an authenticated user to Process Platform user
- Redirecting the SOAP request to service containers
- Redirecting the SOAP response to Clients
- Security policy checks
Notice that the Process Platform Web Gateway never does authentication. Authentication is done either by Operating System (Basic Authentication) or by Single Sign-On service of Process Platform (SSO authentication) or by any third party Web server plug-in.
Process Platform Web Gateway cannot process the SOAP request on its own and hence, it must redirect it to one of the service containers. This redirection is done based on the namespace and the method combination.
The gateway is part of Process Platform installation and the gateway is loaded into the Web server during the Process Platform installation. You can install the gateway IIS or Apache Web servers.
Applications of the Gateway
The following are the applications of gateway in Process Platform which work with documents:
- Upload - The Upload gateway handles requests for uploading documents. There is a library of methods associated with Upload which facilitate uploading documents to a service in Process Platform. For more information on Upload, refer Upload.
- Download - The Download gateway handles requests for downloading documents. There is a library of methods associated with Download which facilitate downloading documents from a service in Process Platform. For more information on download, refer Download.
As mentioned in the section above, Web gateway can also be used for resolving SAML artifacts with user credentials within Process Platform. For information on SAML artifacts, refer to Using SAML Artifacts Between Browser and Web Server. If you wish to configure the Web gateway with security options so that it performs policy checks, refer to Managing Web Gateway with Secuirty Options.