Windchill System Administrator's Guide

Overview
The Windchill bootstrap loader is intended to make Java applets and applications
usable over the Internet and on wide area networks, such as enterprise intranets
and extended enterprise extranets.
When direct RMI socket connectivity is not possible from a client, installing the
bootstrap loader will enable the client to tunnel RMI over other protocols. There
are several reasons a client may not be able to make direct RMI connections to the
Windchill server: a firewall sitting between the client and the Windchill server is
blocking the Windchill RMI ports (5001-5010), client only has HTTP access
through a client-side proxy, or the Windchill application server is on a different
host than the applet's codebase (for example, reverse proxy or split web
server/servlet engine).
This chapter provides background information on the bootstrap feature of
Windchill, and information related to administrative responsibilities for creation
and maintenance of JAR files when the bootstrap feature is enabled.
About the Bootstrap Feature
The bootstrap feature of Windchill allows Java applets and applications that
would normally be downloaded from a server to be loaded from locally cached
JAR files. This improves performance by eliminating the need to load Java class
files and other resources from across the network.
The bootstrap feature automatically manages a cache of local JAR files that
correspond to remote server codebases. (A codebase is the URL to the root of a
directory tree containing Java class and resource files.) The bootstrap feature
provides the following functionality:
• Preserves namespace separation between codebases
• Preserves the security of the sandbox to which code from each remote
codebase is subject
• Does not add codebase JAR files to the Java system class path (the
CLASSPATH environment variable) of the client system
A major benefit of using the bootstrap feature is that maintenance of each server
codebase remains centralized, and no additional per-client administrative
responsibilities are incurred. Even if a codebase undergoes frequent changes, the
bootstrap feature recognizes the existence of new JAR files, and allows you to
download the files.
To use the bootstrap feature, clients must have both the Windchill bootstrap
package installed, and JAR files contained on their servers’ codebases. (If a client
has the bootstrap feature installed, but a server codebase does not contain the
required JAR files, the bootstrap feature is ignored. Similarly, the existence of
JAR files in a server codebase does not affect clients that do not have the
bootstrap feature locally installed.)
2-2 Windchill System Administrator’s Guide