Specifying the Self-Referencing URL

The self-referencing URL identifies the Application Broker program URL. In most cases you will not need to set this value. The URL is passed to the SAS program in a macro variable called _URL. The Web server uses the script-name environment variable to change the value of _URL. The Application Server uses the variable _URL to generate the variables _THISSRV and _THISSESSION.

You might need to change the self-referencing URL in the following situations:

• if your Web server does not set the script-name environment variable or sets it incorrectly.

• if your site uses load balancing with its Web servers. For example, a site might have a Web server www.company.com that dynamically refers all browser requests to a range of Web servers from www1.company.com through www5.company.com. In this situation, the self-referencing URL might direct the request to www2.company.com/cgi-bin/broker rather than to the original, load-balanced Web server. If all the company's Web servers used the Dispatcher, you could set the self-referencing URL to point to www.company.com/cgi-bin/broker, which would direct all requests to the load-balanced service to maintain the use of Web server load balancing with each page of the Dispatcher application.