Configuring applications to be launched by the Agent Controller

One of the features of the Agent Controller is its ability to allow a remote client to launch applications on the local host. In order to do this, a configuration description for the application must be present in the Agent Controller configuration file. This description is the role of the <Application> element and its children. Only application descriptions that are provided by the <Application> elements in the active configuration can be launched by The Agent Controller.

Creating a configuration description

To create a configuration description, follow these steps:

  1. Locate the serviceconfig.xml configuration file. See the related task.
  2. Open it in an editor, and add an <Application> element. The application must be identified by an alias name and also the fully qualified path of the executable that this alias maps to.
    For example, if you want to create a configuration for an application with the alias name of TestApplication, the configuration mapping to a real executable testapp.exe on the local host, you would add this fragment:
    <Application configuration="default" executable="TestApplication" path="c:\tools\testapp.exe" 
    location="D:\">
      <Variable name="PATH" value="C:\tools" position="prepend"/>
    </Application>

This fragment describes an application called TestApplication, that maps to c:\tools\testapp.exe, and its preferred executable location is in the root of the D drive. TestApplication will always have c:\tools prefixed to the PATH.

The remote client only asks The Agent Controller to launch TestApplication and has no notion of what actual executable is being run as a result of this request. Furthermore, it is not possible to remotely list the application descriptions available. As a result, the Agent Controller needs to be configured in order to respond to a remote client's request to run an application.


 

Note: Application descriptions also have the ability to override or to extend environment variable values for the applicaiton being launched as well as to override or to extend the parameters that will be provided to the application executable at launch time.

Related concepts
The Agent Controller

Related tasks
Locating the configuration files
Administering the Agent Controller
 


(C) Copyright IBM Corporation 2000, 2005. All Rights Reserved.