Policy Agent 2.2–01 Web Agents: Support for INVALID Methods

Typically, a web server marks a request as an INVALID method and denies access to the resource when the request uses a method other than any of the methods listed in the preceding section.

However, in cases where the web server is configured to forward requests to an application that can handle non-standard HTTP methods, the web server does not deny access, but forwards the request to the requested application. You can configure Access Manager to allow or deny such INVALID requests. A typical example is when a web agent is installed on Apache HTTP Server that is configured as a proxy for Microsoft Exchange Server. In this scenario, requests can use methods such as SEARCH or SUBSCRIBE, which are not recognized by Apache HTTP Server and, therefore, marked as INVALID.

To decide if such requests should be allowed or denied, the INVALID method must be loaded in the iPlanetAMWebAgentService service.