External Aliases 

External aliases are used to make it possible to call services using any appropriate non-technical name.

You can create external aliases that link to a service (choose External Aliases). External aliases can have the form /name1/name2/... and can be used to create more meaningful path names to services in the ICF service tree, for example, /SAP/mySAPdotcom/ping as an external alias to the Ping service. Unlike internal aliases, external aliases may contain slashes.

Otherwise, an external alias is handled as an internal alias. Just like an internal alias, it does not differentiate between upper and lowercase.

In other words, if the string of an external alias is found in the URL of an incoming request, HTTP request handler for the service assigned to this alias is called. The service data of the external alias overrides that of the target service.

 

An incoming URL is first checked against the external aliases, then against the internal aliases.

Transporting External Aliases

To transport an external alias, position the cursor on it and choose  or choose External Alias  ® Transport. The system then displays a dialog box, and you can enter the transport key. If you choose /test*, for example, then all external aliases that begin with /test are transported. In the following section you must specify the transport request that should contain the transport.

 

For information about other functions in SICF, see Activating and Deactivating an ICF Service.