Setting Up Your System for Process ASP Development

This topic provides a procedure for setting up your development system to develop ASP pages for Process applications that use the FileNet Web Services web application.

Subtopics include:

Prerequisites for ASP Development

These procedures assume you have already set up a Process Engine server and a web server dedicated to development and configured with the following:

Note Refer to the Web Server setup section of the FileNet Web Administrator's Help and the Configuration section of the IDM Web Administrator's Help for installation requirements.

Additionally, these procedures assume you will be developing your ASP-based applications on a development system, rather than a production web server. In order to remotely develop your application, using Visual InterDev or Visual Studio, you must install the FrontPage Extensions. If you choose develop your application directly on your production web server, you need not install the FrontPage Extensions. For information on server architecture and configuration, see Process Engine Architecture/Components - FileNet Web Services.

Note If you have not already installed IIS on your Windows NT Server, refer to the appropriate Microsoft documentation for the proper installation procedure. For information on installing FileNet Web Services, refer to the IDM Web Administrator's Help.

Setting Up for ASP Procedure

Perform the following steps to set up your development system for FileNet Web Services (including PJAC for FileNet Web Services) ASP development:

Note While there are no specific requirements for you to use a visual programming language or an IDE to develop new ASP files or to modify existing default ASP files for Process applications, many developers find it helpful to develop or customize ASPs using Microsoft's Visual InterDev™ or Visual Studio™.

One alternative to using an IDE or ASP development tool, like Visual InterDev or Visual Studio, is to work directly in the <drive>...\Program Files\FileNET\IDM\Web\IDMWS directory structure on your Process Services web server. If you familiar with HTML and ASP and only want to make minor changes to specific files, working in the directory structure may be the simplest approach. (Since you will be working in an active web server directory structure, it is good practice to make a fallback copy of the directory before you start). If you are developing a larger application with multiple changes across many files, you should consider using a visual development tool.

  1. Add the required Process Services components (i.e., FileNet Web Services and PJAC components) to your project. For details, see Adding Process Services Components.
  2. It is recommended that you create a generic ASP page (or pages) to simplify your development effort. For details, see Creating a Generic ASP for Process Services.
  3. Set required web directory permissions to ensure your application's access to URLs and COM components or verify that all needed script execute permissions for the directory containing your web application have already been set. For details, see Setting Web Server Directory Permissions.

    At this point you are ready to develop ASP pages for a Process application, such as an HTML Step Processor. To simplify this task, you may wish to use the HTML Step Processor Toolkit provided with your Process installation. For information, see Using the FileNet Web Services HTML Step Processor Toolkit.