What Is an Application?
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An application is a platform-independent repository for a group of related components, such as procedures, Master and Access Files, data files, HTML files, PDF files, and image files. It provides an area on the server that both confers a unique identity on the application components and facilitates the sharing of components across applications in an organized manner. This construct also simplifies the process of moving a user application from one platform to another and of deploying PC-developed applications.

These components are physically grouped together on an application-by-application basis for run-time execution. This physical grouping can be within an application under a common root or a mapping to an application anywhere in the file system. The physical application or mapped name is referred to as the application name in this document. A comprehensive set of application (APP) commands are provided to control or manipulate the application components, as well as to facilitate applications that can be written and deployed to any platform.

The physical location of an application and its components is determined by a configuration parameter called approot. This parameter is set at installation time and stored in the server configuration file, edaserve.cfg. The default value is dependent on the platform, relative to the install ID home directory, where applicable, as indicated in the following chart.

Application directories can be nested. A nested application directory is an application created within a higher-level application. For more information, see Nested Application Directories.

You can also create a home application directory for each user. Providing a user home application directory gives each user a directory where he has full control to create, change, and run his applications. For more information, see Home Application Directories for Users.

Note: Where directories are referenced in the chart, lowercase application directories are created below the approot value. The application names must be lowercase and must not contain spaces. For a PDS deployment on the Unified Server, data sets are created for each component type using the approot value as the high-level qualifier.

Platform

Default Value for approot

Unified Server HFS Deployment

Unified Server PDS Deployment

.../ibi/apps

approotvalue.appname.component_type

UNIX

.../ibi/apps

Linux

.../ibi/apps

Windows

...\ibi\apps

IBM i (formerly known as i5/OS)

.../ibi/apps

OpenVMS

[.IBI.APPS]

Two applications are provided during installation: a default application called baseapp and an application containing sample files called ibisamp. In addition, when you connect to the server a temporary directory called foccache is added as the first directory in the search path. When you want to be able to reuse data within the same browser session, you can store the data in the form of a HOLD, SAVE, or SAVB file in the foccache directory. As long as the browser session remains active, the files stored in the foccache directory can be referenced in requests.

Access to a particular application component can be explicit or implicit. Implicit access is dependent upon the search path in effect at the time of execution. The search path always includes the default application, baseapp. There is no need to explicitly declare this application.

You can change the search path from the Web Console, from the Data Management Console, or from within your application code. You can also change the search path temporarily to add application names to the beginning or end of an existing search path. APP commands are described briefly in Application Commands Overview and in detail later in this chapter.

Note: For platforms that support the Universal Naming Convention (UNC), you can specify a network drive for approot. The UNC must be:


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