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Web Applications

Overview

As part of the Hosting services the Digital Ohio Office provides two database environments and supports connectivity to agency owned database installations. The two in-house environments are Oracle 8i ee and MS-Access. Within certain boundaries connectivity can also be provided out to agency owned databases such as Oracle and SQL-Server.

Load Balancing

The hosting environment includes two servers which receive requests from a load balancing switch. This works quite well for Databases that reside on database servers such as Oracle and SQL-Server. MS-Access however, is a file level database and must reside on the same server as its application pages. This means that MS-Access does not support load balancing for applications that receive information from the visitors. Therefor, any write-enabled applications can run on ONLY one of the two silos. This begs the question..

"If my pages are on both servers how do I run a write-enabled application on only one server?"

The solution to this issue is to have a domain name that is routed to only one side of the load balanced pair and to have the urls calling write-enabled applications made to pages using the special domain. See Write Enabled MS-Access Applications for specific guidelines and information.

Application Hosting

Application Coding & Structure

  1. Each set of application pages should reside in their own directory. See also Directory Structures
  2. It is a best practice to have a default.xxx or index.xxx page in each application directory. These pages can be static (htm, html) or dynamic (stm, asp).
  3. Database files reside in either the DataRead or DataWrite directories, in the Hosted Oracle environment, or in the Agencies environment. In all of these instances directories are outside of the web structure which means that the database files can not be downloaded. If a MS-Access database is placed within the agency web directory then anyone who can determine the file name can download the full database.
  4. Global.asa files and Application Objects are required. ODBC Connectivity is not supported.
  5. It is a best practice to at least attempt to control how much of an application is indexed by search engines. This can be done in a combination of ways..
    • Robots Meta Tag - restricts the Page Gatherer from indexing specific web pages. Not all indexers comply with the robots meta tag. See Reference Links for more information.

    • Robots.txt files - are controlled by the system administrators and are used to indicate to web crawling robots the directories that are excluded from indexing. Not all robots comply with the robots.txt file. The dw.ohio.gov domain is set up with a robots.txt file to prevent indexing. The goal here is to prevent search results from dropping a visitor directly into an application. See Reference Links for more information.

  6. It is a best practice to provide keyword and description meta tags on pages that introduce applications and contain links to the applications. The contents of these meta tags are picked up by search engines. The description meta tag is used by search engines to display a short paragraph describing the page. The keywords meta tag is used to populate the search index terms. Some search engines have restrictions on the number of characters accepted in the description and number of keywords accepted. Keep descriptions short, perhaps under 200 characters. Put the most important terms at the front and do include misspellings as needed.

Application Testing

  1. The www.[agency].test.ohio.gov domain name should be used to test applications
  2. If an SSL Certificate is required and the application is not using the shared dw.ohio.gov domain name, then the Agency staff will need to provide the Digital Ohio staff with a job number so that an entrust certificate request can be sent to the ITSD for purchase.
  3. An Application Census record is a pre-requisite to obtaining an Application Object
  4. An Application Object must be in place before a global.asa file will work
  5. A dynamic redirect can be used for linking to the application so that during testing the pages on the test environment will be used but once the application is in production the production pages will be used. See Write Enabled MS-Access Applications for details.
  6. Load Testing should be done for all applications where the anticipated usage exceeds 1,000 views per month. Please use the Request Form to schedule load testing. Please include the sequence of links that an application visitor might follow when using the application. Also provide information on any sample data that should be used. Load Testing requires close coordination between the Digital Ohio staff and the customer.

Launching a Database

  1. Write enabled MS-Access databases are moved to production by the portal staff ONLY and are NOT replicated into production. Please use the Request Form to request that a database be moved into production.
  2. Read Only MS-Access databases are replicated into production when a Hosting Customer uses FTP to place the database in the appropriate DataRead directory.
  3. Oracle databases are moved to production by the DBA staff ONLY and are NOT replicated into production. Hosting Customers will be billed for DBA hours. Please use the Request Form to request that a database be moved into production. Please include a job number with the request.
  4. Databases residing on an agency server are governed by agency procedures

Launching Application pages

  1. Agency staff will migrate application pages into production by using FTP to place them in the appropriate subdirectory within the _LaunchPoint directory. The replication process will automatically place these pages into production.
  2. It is a best practice to use FTP to pull down to a local directory all of the application pages that are about to be replaced.
  3. It is a best practice to test the application in production after new pages have been migrated over to production even if they have been fully tested in the test environment.

Retrieving & Updating your data

  1. MS-Access databases receiving data from website visitors are replicated to Submissions subdirectories in the DataWrite directory in the test environment.
  2. Oracle data is not directly available to Hosting Customers. To control data in the Oracle environment a web front end for administration will need to be created by the Hosting Customer.
  3. Extracts of Oracle databases can be provided by the DBA staff. Hosting Customers will be billed for DBA hours. Please use the Request Form to request that a database be moved into production. Please include a job number with the request.

Appendix

Application Objects

The Application object shares, stores, and retrieves information in response to requests from users to the application. See the Reference Links page for more information.

Application Objects are created by the Digital Ohio staff and can not be created by the content/application owner. Please use the Request Form to request an Application Object. Prerequisites include the submission of an Application Census for the application and the establishment of a global.asa file. The request needs to contain the name of the directory containing the application.