PMPER-2002: Override AWI properties at runtime with environment variables

[Michael A. Lowry]

I just submitted PMPER-2002 to ideas.automic.com:

Many web apps provide the possibility of overriding properties at run time with environment variables. The Automic Web Interface should also provide this capability, e.g., for the automationEngine.index and maincolor, and logo.filename properties.

The benefit of this is most apparent when deploying the app to multiple environments (DEV, TEST, PROD). When it is possible to specify or override configuration details via environment variables, then one can package a single common app that can be deployed as-is to all environments.

As more and more companies take advantage the benefits of public cloud platforms like Pivotal, IBM BlueMix, and Swisscom Application Cloud, it will be increasingly important for developers of web applications like the AWI to ensure that their apps are easily configurable and deployable on such platforms.

See the following discussion forum post for details:
https://community.automic.com/discussion/8750/running-the-awi-in-cloud-foundry-platform-as-a-service

Note too that this request is related to PMPER-1734. If that request is also delivered, then it would be ideal if the properties added (to allow specifying HTML title and favorite icon) also had corresponding environment variables that could be used to override these properties at run time.

If you like this idea, please let Automic Product Management know!

[Michael A. Lowry]

Automic has documented a Java property, com.uc4.ecc.config.dir, that can be used to specify the path to the AWI config directory at run time. This provides an alternative way of overriding configuration details at runtime. See this discussion for details.