6. Visualizing Dependencies in AppXaminer

In this section, you will explore how Workshop simplifies web application dependency management. You will use AppXaminer to view resource dependencies, check for missing links, and calculate the number of references to a specific resource.

Background

Web applications are comprised of many layers; these include presentation, business logic, and data integration layers. When you import an existing web application, AppXRay, the underlying technology behind Workshop, scans all of the artifacts of your web application. AppXRay maintains a hierarchy of relationships among these artifacts, including a map of all inter-dependencies among artifacts. Workshop visually presents this information through AppXaminer to provide a complete and in depth view of all web application dependencies providing automatic problem detection and ease of navigation throughout the environment.

Viewing Dependencies

1. In the AppXplorer view, right-click home.jsp and Show AppXRay Dependencies to launch AppXaminer.

AppXaminer outlines all of the dependencies going into and coming out of the home.jsp node. Expanding the branch next to a resource, such as errors.jsp, allows you to easily drill down through multiple levels to analyze the dependency chain and traverse the flow through the application. Double-clicking a dependency will open in it in the appropriate editor.

Checking for missing resources and broken links

In this section you will introduce an error into the shopping cart page to demonstrate how AppXaminer immediately detects and reports broken or missing resources.

1. In the AppXplorer view, right-click on shoppingcart.jsp and Show AppXRay Dependencies.
2. In the AppXaminer view, click the superscript "1" next to the errors.jsp and navigate to the <@%page> tag inside shoppingcart.jsp

   

3. Change the second line of shoppingcart.jsp to errorPage="error.jsp". (Remove the 's' from 'errors.jsp'.)
4. Click back to AppXaminer, and notice that the forward page now shows up in red, denoting that shoppingcart.jsp is referring to a non-existent page.
   
   
5. Change the shoppingcart.jsp errorPage back to errors.jsp.

Viewing included pages
Viewing web pages in a different locale

Click one of the following arrows to navigate through the tutorial: