One of the problems with releasing technology early is that sometimes the documentation has trouble keeping up. This appears to have been a particular issue with the new HTTP Analyzer which as I have talked about previously has introduced the concept of Rules. Unfortunately the on-line help we shipped with the technology preview was not updated to describe the new rules. So I am going to give a quick little summary of the different types here:
| Rule Name | Description |
| Tape | This rules allows you to intercept one or more URLs and response with pre-canned messages taken from a WSI-Log file. This is used to create effect in my mock paypal demo I showed before. Of course this can be useful for any HTTP traffic. |
| Forward | This rule will intercept all URL matched by the filter and forward the request on to a single URL. Useful for testing or perhaps for replacing your iPhone OS. |
| URL Substitution | This rule was envisioned to allow the user to re-host services by replacing parts of URL ranges. For example replacing the machine name is particularly useful when moving between the embedded and external oc4js. |
| Pass Through | This is the default rule and for the given range of URL process the request normally through the normal proxy settings. This is generally going to be the last rule in the list with a blank filter catch all that remaining messages. |
One important thing to remember with rules is that they are processed from top to bottom and that a blank URL filter will match anything. Unfortunately the controls for adding Rules in the technology preview will tend to add the rules at the end of the list. This will put them after the default pass through rule which by default has a blank filter and therefore will match everything.
We have received some user feedback that the rules are hard to get right, So to that end in the nightly builds we have been playing with an inline filter tester which may or may not make it to production. I would be interested to get feedback on this:
This will also show you when the filter is invalid. Also, unlike the developer preview, we now correctly validate the rule panel and wont let you leave the dialog until they make some kind of sense.
Right hopefully that is enough to be going on with. We are quite proud of the HTTP Analyzer in JDeveloper and it compares very well with the functionality of other products. (For example the equivalent tool in Eclipse WTP or NetBeans) It can be applied to anything that makes use of the HTTP protocol so can be used to debug anything from
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