Connecting Crystal Enterprise to a CGI web server

The CGI Web Connector allows you to connect Crystal Enterprise to web servers that support the Common Gateway Interface (CGI). Depending upon your web server, you typically configure CGI applications in one of two ways: either you specify a particular directory (the cgi-bin) as one that allows programs to execute commands or scripts, or you specify certain file types that are globally executable, regardless of the directory in which they are located. In Crystal Enterprise, the actual CGI Web Connector program is wcscgi.cgi (also provided as wcscgi.exe). This program handles requests for .csp, .cwr, .cri, and .rpt files.

In general, setting up CGI depends largely upon your web server, its configuration files or administrative applications, and the particular ways in which they allow you to set up virtual directories and application mappings. You may need to consult your web server documentation for specific details on how to set up CGI applications. Additional information that is specific to your web server may be available from http://support.crystaldecisions.com

Note:    See the Platforms.txt file included with your product distribution for a complete list of web servers that are officially supported for use with the CGI Web Connector. Using the CGI Web Connector with other web servers is neither recommended nor supported.

By default, ePortfolio and the Crystal Management Console (CMC) have been designed generically to work with ASAPI, IIS, NSAPI, DSAPI, and CGI technologies. As such, these applications do support CGI, but only in a particular manner. The following steps show how to set up the tested CGI configuration and how to subsequently log on to ePortfolio and the CMC.

To configure the CGI Web Connector

1. Stop your web server.
2. If you do not already have a cgi-bin virtual directory set up on your web server, create one and map it to the actual directory where the wcscgi.cgi file was installed (the default is C:\Program Files\Crystal Decisions\WCS).

   Note:    If you already have a cgi-bin virtual directory set up on your web server, or if your web server restricts your ability to map the cgi-bin to the actual WCS directory, copy the wcscgi.cgi file into the actual directory that is already mapped to the cgi-bin.

3. If you created a new cgi-bin virtual directory, ensure that it is marked as executable on the web server. You should also check that your file and directory permissions allow the wcscgi.cgi file to be executed when users make requests to the web server.
4. Restart your web server.
5. Ensure that the Crystal Enterprise servers are started and enabled.

Note:    If you performed the full stand-alone installation, no additional configuration is required. If you installed the Web Connector and the Web Component Server (WCS) on different machines, you must provide the Web Connector with information about the remote WCS. For details, see Configuring the Web Connector for a remote WCS.

Using ePortfolio and the CMC with CGI

Once you have set up the CGI Web Connector, you can use ePortfolio and the Crystal Management Console. However, you cannot access these applications from the links on the Crystal Enterprise Launchpad. Instead, for all Crystal Enterprise requests, you must add cgi-bin/wcscgi.cgi to the URL, as demonstrated in the following examples.

Replace webserver with the name of your web server machine, and replace language with the information appropriate to your version of Crystal Enterprise: use en for English, fr for French, de for German, and ja for Japanese.

To log on to ePortfolio

Go to the following URL:

http://webserver/cgi-bin/wcscgi.cgi/crystal/enterprise/eportfolio/language/logon.csp

To log on to the CMC

Go to the following URL:

http://webserver/cgi-bin/wcscgi.cgi/crystal/enterprise/admin/language/admin.cwr