Config Editor - changes and improvements in iXperion 1.2
With several new features within iXperion 1.2, such as moving the hostheaders to Smartsite.config, the Config Editor needed to be adjusted as well to be able to support/deal with these new features.
This article describes the changes.
New and improved validators
When using the Validate button within the Config Editor, your site's configuration is validated using so-called validator-classes.
The Config Editor version which comes with iXperion 1.2 does have several new and/or improved validator-classes:
- Outscaling configuration
- Active Directory configuration
- IIS configuration
- Oracle configuration
The Outscaling configuration validator checks your Outscaling (registry) configuration.
The Active Directory configuration validator (when applicable) checks the active directory configuration elements within the web.config. It also tries to connect to the Active Directory, using the specified connectionstring and user credentials. Furthermore, it also checks whether the specified groups as SmartsiteAccessGroup and ManagerAccessGroup do exist on the Active Directory. Notice that this validator only applies to Active Directory, and that an equivalent LDAP validator isn't available (yet).
The IIS configuration validator have been adjusted to include IIS 7.0(+) specific checks, such as advanced recycling options.
And finally, the Oracle configuration validator is used when your site's configuration includes Oracle connections.
Set Site Security
The Config Editor used to check various ACL (Access Control Lists) rights, e.g. on the filesytem (Temporary ASP.NET Files folder for example) and the registry. These checks have been removed, since iXperion 1.2 now includes the Set Site Security tool, which does a much better job in validating the appropriate ACL rights.
And, as its name suggests, Set Site Security isn't just to validate ACL rights, it is also designed to set the appropriate ACL rights. This tool is available from the Tools menu within the Config Editor, as well as from the Windows start-menu.
Hostheaders
In iXperion 1.2, the hostheaders configuration has been moved from the Channel items to the smartsite.config configuration file. And since the Config Editor provides access to the most important configuration settings within smartsite.config, it now also include support for editing/validating the hostheaders configuration.
Unsupported site(s)
Due to several configuration changes, as well as the fact that the Restore Defaults option could potentially damage pre-1.2 configurations, the Config Editor which comes with iXperion 1.2 now checks the version of iXperion installed for a particular site.
If this is a pre-1.2 version, the site will be marked red and in the information pane in the upper-right corner the message "This site instance is incompatible with this version of the Config Editor" will be displayed. Also, the Unlock, Validate and Validate Operational Status buttons will be disabled when selecting a pre-1.2 site.
To edit and/or validate the configuration for pre-1.2 sites, you need to use the Config Editor included within the iXperion 1.1 setup.