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Enabling HTTP Compression for Siebel Web Applications

The use of HTTP compression between the browser and the Web server can improve the performance of Siebel eBusiness Applications over a wide-area network (WAN). Typically, you should consider enabling HTTP compression if a significant number of users access applications over a WAN for which network bandwidth may be a constraint.

The benefit of compression is even greater for users who access applications using standard interactivity, rather than high interactivity, because the latter is already optimized for network use.

However, if your users access applications mostly over a local-area network (LAN), turning on HTTP compression does not improve performance. Instead, it might create performance overhead related to the extra processing needed on both the client and the server sides to compress and decompress data.

HTTP compression is available for all supported Web server platforms without any additional installation. HTTP compression functionality is built into the Siebel Web Server Extension.

CAUTION:  You should not use compression if you have an application between the Web server and browser, such as a proxy server or firewall, that does not support HTTP 1.1.

Before using HTTP compression, you must make it active by setting the DoCompression parameter in the eapps.cfg file.

• FALSE. If you do not want to compress any traffic.
• TRUE. If you want to compress certain traffic. If this option is selected, the application will still disable compression in the following scenarios:
  • Traffic with HTTP 1.0 headers. This is because HTTP 1.0 does not support compression.
  • Traffic from a proxy server. This is because it may not be possible for the Siebel administrator to know whether an end user is behind a proxy server that only supports HTTP 1.0 traffic.
• CompressProxyTraffic. Use this option if you want to compress all traffic, whether or not it goes through a proxy server. You should only use this option if your application administrator is 100% certain that any proxy server or other appliance between the Web server and browser supports HTTP 1.1.

You can enable or disable HTTP compression as default functionality for all applications or selectively for individual applications. By default, HTTP compression is enabled for all applications.

To enable HTTP compression

1. Open the eapps.cfg file, located in the SWEAPP_ROOT\bin directory, in a text editor.
2. Perform one or both of the following:
   • To enable HTTP compression as default functionality, set the DoCompression parameter to TRUE in the [defaults] section. If the DoCompression parameter is not present, add it.
   • To enable HTTP compression for an individual application, set the DoCompression parameter to TRUE in the section for that application. For example, in [/callcenter], set DoCompression = TRUE. If the DoCompression parameter is not present, add it.

     NOTE:  Setting a parameter for an individual application overrides the default setting that may appear in the [defaults] section. If a parameter is set as a default, then its value applies to all applications for which it is not overridden at the individual application level.

3. Save and close the eapps.cfg file. Changes to the eapps.cfg file are not active until you restart the Web server.

To disable HTTP compression as a default or for an individual application, set DoCompression to FALSE in the appropriate section of the eapps.cfg file.

Compressing Static Content for Windows IIS

The Siebel compression filter only compresses dynamic content. For more information about static compression on IIS and instructions on how to enable it, see your IIS 5.0 vendor documentation.

If you plan to compress static Web content in IIS 5.0 on any Web server used for Siebel eBusiness Applications, make sure that you set the IIS 5.0 properties as listed in the following example:

For instructions on how to set properties on IIS, see your vendor documentation.

The example that follows illustrates a script that you can run on your IIS Web servers to enable static compression after editing it to fit your site requirements.

rem --------------------------------------------------------------

rem run this on webserver site

rem make sure the directories c:\inetpub\AdminScripts\ are correct.

rem --------------------------------------------------------------

c:

cd \

cd inetpub

cd AdminScripts

cscript.exe adsutil.vbs set W3Svc/Filters/Compression/GZIP/HcFileExtensions "htm" "html" "txt" "css" "js"

cscript.exe adsutil.vbs set W3Svc/Filters/Compression/DEFLATE/HcFileExtensions "htm" "html" "txt" "css" "js"

cscript.exe adsutil.vbs set W3Svc/Filters/Compression/Parameters/HcSendCacheHeaders "FALSE"

cscript.exe adsutil.vbs set W3Svc/Filters/Compression/Parameters/HcNoCompressionForProxies "TRUE"

cscript.exe adsutil.vbs set W3Svc/Filters/Compression/Parameters/HcNoCompressionForHttp10 "TRUE"

rem --------------------------------------------------------------

rem Verify the settings

rem --------------------------------------------------------------

cscript.exe adsutil.vbs get W3Svc/Filters/Compression/GZIP/HcFileExtensions

cscript.exe adsutil.vbs get W3Svc/Filters/Compression/DEFLATE/HcFileExtensions

CAUTION:  Setting these properties for static compression will affect all applications served on that Web server. Therefore, carefully review your vendor documentation and your site requirements before making a decision to enable this type of compression.