Application conceptual overview
The following image illustrates the conceptual organization of the Java Web Manager.
Figure 4: Conceptual overview
Concept One: Sessions are assigned to groups and only to groups
Sessions exist at the group level, not the user level. If you want a user to receive two Mainframe Display sessions and one
Virtual Terminal session, then that user must belong to a group with those characteristics.
Concept Two: Every user is in a group
Users do not exist outside of a group.
Concept Three: Every user gets every session assigned to the group
Because sessions exist at the group level, every user in the group sees all the sessions. If you want one user to have three
sessions and another to have four, then they must be in two different groups. However, you can share configuration files
across groups, so users in different groups can launch the same sessions.
Concept Four: Overriding session settings at the user level affects only that user's session
Session overrides (or switches) are a very powerful feature of the Java Web Manager. Using switches allows a fine granularity
to the configuration of user sessions. You can imagine user switches as a layer of clear plastic that is laid over top of
the group session, resulting in a merged session with the user level preferences on top.
| Group preferences | User preferences | Merged preferences |
|---|---|---|
| Red | Red | |
| Green | Orange | Orange |
| Blue | Blue |
By logical extension, making changes to the user switches has no effect on the underlying group session.
To illustrate the power of overrides, let us assume the administrator has a configuration file that specifies a Mainframe
Display session window. The window size and position are set, the keyboard mappings are set, and the color scheme is set
to the administrator's liking. The administrator wants to use these settings for every mainframe connection, but has ten
different mainframes with ten distinct IP addresses/DNS names. Rather than creating ten different configuration files, the
administrator sets the host address in the configuration file to hostOne.myDomain.com. Using the session override feature at the group level, the "Host Address" the administrator specifies hostTwo.myDomain.com as the main host for the group. Using the session override at the user level, the "Host Address" is specified as hostThree.myDomain.com. All three levels share the same configuration file specifying window size, location, color scheme, keyboard mappings, etc.
but connect to three different hosts on launch.