Pharos Blueprint Web Services and Third Party Web Application Interactions

After I install Pharos Blueprint Analyst or Collector, the installation test routine fails for both the Tracker Web Service and EDI Web Service. The message for both says "The web service test failed. Client found response content type of 'text / html', But expected 'text / xml'."

You may experience this error message for the Pharos Blueprint web services if another web application is installed on the server hosting Blueprint.

Background

When installing Pharos Blueprint Collector or Analyst, a segment of the installation installs two web applications for the purposes of Tracker function (PharosSystems) and Terminal functions (PharosEDI). These applications run in the 32-bit address space, even on 64-bit systems, through the PharosAppPool application pool/worker process created for IIS.

Definitions

For the purposes of this document, "Third Party" is any non-Pharos web application installed on the core server operating system, including any Microsoft application like SharePoint or WSUS.

Installing Third Party Web Applications

While the Pharos Blueprint Installation documentation does not specifically state this, Pharos Systems does not recommend the installation of other applications on servers hosting the Blueprint Analyst or Collector application. The reasons for this are manifold, and include:

1. Resource contention by other applications diminishing the user "print" experience. This is a specific risk when the Collector is being used for any of:

   1. Preton Toner Savings integration

   2. Secure Release Here

   3. Policy Print

   4. Print job tracking (in other words, no Blueprint Tracker software installed on client workstations)

2. Incompatibility with a Pharos Blueprint function. Antivirus, malware, and security software provide challenges for many of Blueprint's operations, but are considered a necessary component of a stable computing environment. However, other software that provides different functions may interfere with Blueprint to the point where core functions cannot operate. This includes:

   1. Altering the normal security settings in a Microsoft IIS implementation

   2. Replacing core IIS components and/or files with versions that do not permit normal operation of, or preclude, 32-bit use (on 64-bit systems).

   3. Unregistering or modifying COM+ objects, causing the Blueprint web applications to fail.

Resolution

Microsoft WSUS Service

There is a known when installing Pharos Blueprint (Analyst or Collector) on a server that is already installed with Microsoft WSUS. The issue stems from a 64-bit version of suscomp.dll installed by the WSUS role/feature in Windows 2008 R2. The resolution is to find a 32-bit version of suscomp.dll (from another install of WSUS) and copy it to c:\windows \SYSWOW64\ and perform an 'iisreset.' Once that is complete, the Pharos Blueprint Tracker and EDI web services should both pass (if there is a Pharos-supplied SSL certificate bound to TCP 443 in IIS Manager; otherwise, the EDI Service check will fail for lack of a certificate).

Other Web Services

Pharos Systems develops its products to work within the standard framework provided by a normal installation of a supported Microsoft Windows operating system. It is our expectation that the software performs as designed when inside that framework. If the addition of (or presence of) a third party web application causes our software to fail, the short term resolution will be to remove the third party application to restore Blueprint operation, or install Blueprint on a dedicated server.