CROSSDOMAIN POLICY FILE

Introduction: A Cross-Domain Policy File is a XML document that grants a web client, such as Adobe Flash Player, permission to handle data across multiple domains. When a client hosts an application from a particular source domain and the content from the application makes a request directed towards a domain other than its own, the remote domain needs to host a Cross-Domain Policy File that grants access to the source domain – the Cross-Domain Policy allows the client to continue with the transaction. Policy files grant read access to data as well as permit a client to include custom headers in cross-domain requests.

Common Use: For Example, a Dashboard application hosted on the Business Objects application server can access data from an SAP (ECC) Server - when the crossdomain.xml file is deployed on the SAP Server. This allows the Business Objects Server to access the resources available on the SAP Server. This document discusses the steps required to deploy the crossdomain.xml file on the SAP BI application server.

Location: The most common location for a policy file on a server is in the root directory of a domain with the file name crossdomain.xml (e.g. http://example.com/crossdomain.xml) the default location that clients check when policies file is required. Policy files saved this way are known as Master policy files. The following is an example of a typical master policy file:

 The “site-control” element here specifies that only this master policy file should be considered valid on this domain. Below that, the “allow-access-from” element specifies that content from any other domain can access any data within the current domain (the domain in which this policy file has been saved). Finally, the “allow-http-request-headers-from” element indicates that a SOAP Action header is also allowed to be sent with requests made to this domain.

There are approximately 21 steps which Blue Marlin Systems used to establish this Cross-Domain Policy in SAP systems.  I have laid out these steps with the SAP transactions and detailed navigations with screenshots in a more detailed document. 

For a copy of this document, contact me: 

Uday Kumar P

Blue Marlin Systems

uday_p@bmsmail.com
www.bluemarlinsys.com/bi/info/bipapers.php