Websites, Web Services & Web Apps.

System Websites.

In your environment you will have one implementation of the system websites. These websites provide web services that are common and utilised across all your client implementations.

For every new client implementation, configuration files are updated with the relevant information about the new client implementation.

Common configurations are...

Setup on a single common web server.
Setup on a separate web server to the client implementations.

The default Simplicity naming convention for the system websites follows.

Production System Website...

services.environment-name.country-code.simplicitycrm.com

Any additional domains or sub-domains can be added to the system website as required. Where SSL certificates are required for these websites there may be additional IP addresses that will need to be provisioned if multiple domain names are in effect.

System Website Services & Web Applications.

Each system website will have the following web applications configured. These make up the system services that are common to all the Simplicity client implementations.

Beacon Service

/BEACON

The beacon web service delivers the locations of the services required by the Simplicity desktop application. These services are then accessed at these locations first attempting on the first returned location for the required service, then the second and so forth.

As an integral part of the Simplicity service this can deliver multiple fallback service locations for any of the required services. These can be different by client and also can return differentiating results for the development, test and production environments. The methods take the ClientID and the CodeSet to determine the appropriate response.

On each communication with the beacon service a file is created “BWSCache.dat” which is encrypted multiple times to ensure its validity. This file contains the information returned from the beacon service which contains the required Simplicity service locations which is also likely to include backup locations for the beacon service itself.

When the Simplicity desktop application starts up, if the cache file is present, it will use this file and firstly identify any beacon services locations specified in the file. If it finds entries for the beacon service in the cache file it will communicate with these firstly in preference to communicating with the default beacon service. If no beacon service can be communicated with, including the default beacon service, and a cache file is present then all the required Simplicity services will be communicated to at the locations specified in the cache file created from the last communication.

In the event there has never been a successful communication with the beacon service and no communication can be established with the default beacon service then the Simplicity desktop application will not be able to be used until an initial connection with the beacon service is made.

Communication is performed with the beacon service at the initial startup of the Simplicity desktop application and returned results are cached for a configurable period of time, typically a week.

Sentinel Service

/SENTINEL

The sentinel service validates the supplied security credentials from the Simplicity desktop application to assess whether the connection to the client database is permitted.

All parameters passed to this service and all responses from the service are encrypted multiple times to ensure security and validity.

The encrypted parameters that are passed to this service include the following.

Windows User Name – E.g. “Joe Bloggs”
Computer Name – E.g. “JoesPC”
Domain Name – E.g. “BLOGGSINC”
CodeSet – E.g. “27000”

The last character identifies the environment

Production: CodeSet will end with “0”
Test: CodeSet will end with “1”
Development: CodeSet will end with “2”

The leading characters identifies the implementation

Once valid credentials have been supplied the sentinel service provides the desktop application with the location, port and name of the client database to connect to.

The sentinel service requires access to the User Maintenance database to validate the supplied security credentials against. Credentials are set up via the “Simplicity User Maintenance” application. These are typically set to match on CodeSet, Domain Name and Windows User Name. This allows for a good balance of flexibility and security for the corporate environment.

The service also provides the desktop application with the credentials to establish its connection to the client database. Sentinel accesses the user maintenance database to both validate the security credentials provided by the application and also to look up the appropriate sql credentials for the application to use.

Perimeter

/PERIMETER

The perimeter service is a transport service that allows for the interaction between the Simplicity desktop application and the client database in an ecapsulated service over SSL. This allows for Simplicity to easily work in almost every corporate environment.

Assembly Information Service

/ASSEMBLYINFO

The assembly info web service delivers the versioning information for the current set of Simplicity application DLL's.

This service is used by the Simplicity desktop application to determine whether the current set of Simplicity DLL's present are the correct release. In the event any of the DLLs are out of date the application will then request these DLL’s. The comparison is done on the version number returned from the service against those present on the clients PC.

This check is performed at the initial startup of the Simplicity desktop application. The DLL version request to the web service passes through the application's CodeSet which the web service uses to look up the DLL directory in the web.config file and then returns the DLL assembly's full name, date, file size and version for each DLL in the directory.

Broker Services

/BROKER

Broker services issues code ranges for label codes, friend get friend codes and other media service calls as required by the customer interaction studio.

This service can be configured for specified clients to proxy its service request to an upstream Simplicity Broker Services web service where required.

File Management Service

/FILEMANAGEMENT

The file management service is used for online form publishing, dynamic page publishing, pdf media publishing and online library access from the Simplicity desktop application.

Whilst these are the current applications for this service its uses will continue to be extended with the continued development of the Simplicity suite of products.

This web service requires disk reading/writing access to the “~\library\”, “~\dynamicpages\app_data\pages\”, “~\media\print\app_data\” and the “~\editors\config\” folders for each of the client websites being hosted.

Configuration of this service can be to have one service running which has access to all the client website directories or alternatively be running separate instances of the service under each of the client websites.

This service caters for uploading and downloading of files automatically compressing, transferring and then decompressing the files after the transfer is complete. Presently the online form configuration files are uploaded compressed and the online library files are uploaded/downloaded non-compressed.

The file management service can be run on the same web server or on a separate web server.