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Lesson 7: Preview the Web site

This lesson illustrates how to preview the Web site on a server.

When you are ready to publish your Web application, you need a server that will host the Web application so that users can access your Web site through the Internet. However, to test your Web site, you can use the default test environment included with Rational® Software Development Platform called the WebSphere® test environment. When you use the WebSphere test environment, the server tools will simulate a server for you.

Note: At any time during your Web site development, you can open a page in Page Designer and use the Preview tab to see how your design will look in a browser; however, the Preview view does not allow you to see the dynamic aspects of your page (such as database connections) as they would display running from a server.
  1. Right-click the all_records.jsp file in the Project Explorer view.
  2. Select Run As > Run on Server. The Run on Server wizard appears.
  3. If this is your first time testing pages, you will need to create a new testing server. Select Manually define a server. If you have already created a server, select Choose an existing server, select your server, and click Finish.
  4. Ensure WebSphere v6.0 Server is selected in the Select the server type list.
  5. Click Finish.

The server tools create the new server simulation, start it, and open the page in a simulated Web browser. This may take a moment. In the Servers view, you can watch the messages as the server tools start the server, as shown here:

console graphic

You can view the complete server startup log at install_dir/runtimes/base_v6/profiles/default/logs/server1, where install_dir is the directory where the product is installed. You can now click through the skeleton of your site to see how the links work, and how the site will display once it is published to a Web server

Now that you completed the tutorial, you can view the tutorial summary by clicking on Next.