Customizing Agile 9 deployment

I was so enthu' when I started my first blog. Now my work is taking a toll on me already and I am trying to keep up with posting blogs on a daily basis. I know I haven't even attempted to publish what I wanted to publish in first place and I already find lack of time. Anyhow, I will not try to make an excuse rather publish what I have in mind.

Here I go with my first tip.

If you are using Agile software and in the process of upgrading to Agile 9, then this is for you.

Agile9 has two options to access the applications, WebClient and JavaClient. WebClient as it stands is a thin client and JavaClient is a thick client with lot of features including administration.

Agile JavaClient is JNLP(Java Network Launch Protocol)-packaged application. It uses the Java Web Start (JWS) mechanism wherein the agile application code is deployed to the client the very first time through the web browser. The JNLP is a descriptor file which contains information on how to start the application and it also has other information like what information to popup when the application downloads and what resources to use. When installed JWS provides an option to save the link as a desktop shortcut for faster access.

The problem we encountered was due to more than one instance of Agile9 environment. Agile9 by default has the following the information in the pcclient.jnlp which is what used to deploy the application.


<title>Agile 9.0</title>
<vendor>Agile Software Corporation</vendor>
<homepage href="help.html">
<description>Agile 9.0</description>
<description kind="tooltip">Agile 9.0 Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) </description>


What happened was everytime we deployed Agile for different environments like Project, Development, QA, it used the above information and hence it couldn't create a desktop short cut which is an option provided by JWS as well as the JWS showed all the applications with the same name except the internal details shows that it was from DEV or QA.

The solution is to customize the entries <title> and <description> on pcclient.jnlp to your need and that did the magic. For example we changed the above jnlp entries as follows for our CRP1 environment.


<title>Agile 9.0 CRP1</title>
<vendor>Agile Software Corporation</vendor>
<homepage href="help.html">
<description>Agile 9.0 CRP1</description>
<description kind="tooltip">Agile 9.0 Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)</description>

Even though the changes look very simple it took a while for me to get this done given that I have no knowledge on Java's JWS/JNLP technology. Now, I am trying to learn a lot from the SUN website as I have realized more and more applications are being developed in Java and it is a required skillset.