URLs must be encoded
according to strict rules whether they appear in static HTML pages,
are created by htmSQL or the Application Dispatcher in dynamic pages,
or are typed manually into the
Location field
of the Web browser. This section gives a quick overview. For more
information, see W3C's Web Addressing Overview at www.w3.org/Addressing.
Here is a sample URL
that is broken into two lines for readability:
http://yourcomp.com/cgi-bin/broker?_service=default
&_program=dev.houses.sas&name=Fred%20Jones
where
|
is the protocol (must
be http: for Application Broker invocations).
|
|
indicates the name of
the Web server.
|
|
is the path to the Application
Broker; an alias or directory mapping set up in the Web server.
|
|
is the name of the program
to run. For the Application Dispatcher this is usually broker, broker.exe,
or broker.cgi.
|
|
indicates the start
of parameters.
|
|
is a name/value pair.
URLs can have zero or more name/value pairs, just like an HTML form.
|
|
separates name/value
pairs.
|
|
indicates an escape
character in hexadecimal notation. In the example, %20 is a space.
This escape notation is used for any characters in a name or value
other than alphanumeric characters or one of the following punctuation
marks: "-_.!~*'()". Use the URLENCODE function to escape characters
in a URL string. For more information about the URLENCODE function,
see the SAS Language Reference: Dictionary.
|
A partial URL results
if the protocol, the Web server, or the path is omitted. Partial URLs
use information from the currently viewed page to fill in the blanks.
For example, if your current page is
http://yourcomp.com/cgi-bin/broker?_debug=4
and the source code references the URL
broker?_service=default&_program=x
then the actual URL is
http://yourcomp.com/cgi-bin/broker?_service=default&_program=x
This is very useful
when you move pages between directories or servers, because there
are fewer changes to make.