Web Agent Guides › Web Agent Configuration Guide › SSO Security Zones › Backward Compatibility Settings

Backward Compatibility Settings

Use any of the following settings to manage the backward comparability of your CA SiteMinder® Agent:

• Accommodate legacy URL encoding.
• Determine how content types are transferred in POST requests.
• Accommodate testing tools that do not send HOST headers.

Accommodate Legacy URL Encoding

The legacy URL encoding used by CA uses dollar sign ($) characters. If the dollar signs cause problems, you can make the Web Agent use hyphen (-) characters instead of dollar signs with the following parameter:

LegacyEncoding

Forces the Web Agent to replace any dollar sign ($) characters in legacy URLs with a hyphen (-). This also ensures backwards comparability with MSR, Password Services, and DMS. When this parameter is set to no, a Web Agent converts the string $SM$ to -SM-. When this parameter is set to yes, the Web Agent does not convert the dollar sign ($) character.

Default: (Framework Agents) No

Default: (Traditional Agents) Yes

To encode legacy URLs using hyphens instead of dollar signs, set the value of the LegacyEncoding parameter to no.

Choose How Content Types are Transferred in POST Requests

If you are using an Apache web server, you can control how content is transferred to the server during POST requests with the following parameter:

LegacyStreamingBehavior

Specifies how content will be transferred to the server during POST requests. When the value of this parameter is set to yes, all content types are streamed, except for the following:

• text/xml
• application/x-www-form-urlencoded

When the value of this parameter is set to no, all content types are spooled.

Default: No

To stream most types of content in POST requests, change the value of the LegacyStreamingBehavior parameter to yes.

Accommodate Testing Tools that do not send HOST Headers

The CA SiteMinder® Web Agent uses the value of the HOST header in an HTTP request to determine the following settings:

• Agent name
• Server name
• Server IP address

CA SiteMinder® Web Agents only accept HTTP version 1.1 requests, because HTTP versions 0.9 and 1.0 do not use HOST headers. This poses problems for some testing tools that do not send HOST headers, because the Web Agent rejects those requests.

CA SiteMinder® 12.52 supports a new Agent Configuration parameter that lets you define a HOST header value. The Web Agent uses this value in any request that does not contain a HOST header.

To accommodate testing tools that do not send HOST headers

1. Open one of the following items:
   • If you are using Central Configuration, open your Agent Configuration Object.
   • If you are using Local Configuration, open your LocalConfig.conf file.
2. Add the following parameter:

   DefaultHostName

   Defines a value for the HOST header. Add this parameter to your Agent Configuration Object or LocalConfig.conf file to use a testing or performance tool that sends HTTP version 0.9 or version 1.0 requests (without HOST headers). If this parameter is not set, the Web Agent only accepts HTTP 1.1 requests.

   Default: None (blank)

   Example: webserver.example.com

3. Set the value of the previous parameter to the host name you want. See the previous example.
4. Save and close one of the following items:
   • If you are using Central Configuration, save and close your Agent Configuration Object.
   • If you are using Local Configuration, save and close your LocalConfig.conf file.

   The Web Agent substitutes the DefaultHostName value for any HTTP request without a HOST header.