TECHNICAL OVERVIEW

The technology described herein relates to aspects of communication between web applications, such as, for example, cross domain web applications.

INTRODUCTION

Enterprise software applications deployed on web servers of an enterprise may often have more than one web application providing data or other information/tools to them. When web applications from different origins interact within the same browser or other application environment, security may become an issue. For example, it may be harmful for a first web application from a first source to have the capability to detect certain information about a second web application from a second source when both the first and second web applications execute within the same application environment. In another example, one would not want a first web application from an enterprise domain to inadvertently execute a malicious script or other malicious program served from some other unsecure domain.

Many browsers attempt to address this potential security vulnerability by disabling what is known as cross-domain scripting. That is, these browsers exercise an access control scheme such that content served by one domain to a web browser cannot be read by another domain from within that web browser.

But such access control schemes may prevent some enterprise web applications from being able to efficiently monitor one or more resources served by third parties that are in domains different from the enterprise. For example, although each such third party application may store one or more cookies or other data in the browser memory during execution, the enterprise web application may be prevented by browser access controls from accessing (e.g., reading) any of the cookies or other data written to the browser memory by these third party applications.

Therefore, as more enterprise software applications are deployed as web applications, technology is needed for improving communication and coordination between such applications.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyrights whatsoever.

SUMMARY

The described technology relates to communication between web applications. The described technology provides a capability for web applications from different domains to interact within one application environment. For example, an enterprise web application executing on a client terminal is provided the capability to monitor a second web application from a third party vendor even when the second web application is independently executing within an iframe or the like within the enterprise web applications container or context. In some example embodiments, the communication is enabled by generating a composite cookie or key that incorporates portions of an enterprise web application cookie or key and also portions of a vendor web application cookie or key.

This Summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in a simplified form that are further described below in the Detailed Description. This Summary is intended neither to identify key features or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor to be used to limit the scope of the claimed subject matter; rather, this Summary is intended to provide an overview of the subject matter described in this document. Accordingly, it will be appreciated that the above-described features are merely examples, and that other features, aspects, and advantages of the subject matter described herein will become apparent from the following Detailed Description, Figures, and Claims.

