These installation instructions are meant for a systems administrator/DBA or someone who is an advanced computer user. They are NOT meant for the average computer user. Please realize that by executing these instructions, you may have to trouble shoot many advanced issues yourself.

Minimum Requirements

Installing Metacat requires a server running an SQL92 compliant database (Oracle 8i recommended) with at least 128MB RAM, and a Pentium III class processor or higher. The amount of disk space required depends on the size of your RDBMS tablespace (which should be at least 10 MB, however Metacat itself requires only about 1 MB of free space after installation. These instructions assume a Linux environment but may work on other UNIX type environments, however this has not been tested.

Additional Required Software

The server on which you wish to install Metacat must have the following software installed and running correctly before attempting to install Metacat.

• Oracle 8i (or another SQL92 compliant RDBMS like Postgres)
• Apache Jakarta-Ant
• Apache Jakarta-Tomcat

  Note: For a more robust web serving environment, Apache web server should be installed along with Tomcat and the two should be integrated as described on the Apache web site.

Oracle 8i

The Oracle RDBMS must be installed and running as a daemon on the system. In addition the JDBC listener must be enabled. You can enable it by logging in as your Oracle user and typing the following:

lsnrctl start

Ant

Ant is a Java based build application similar to Make on UNIX systems. It takes in installation parameters from a file in the root installation directory named "build.xml". The Metacat CVS module contains a default build.xml file that may require some modification upon installation. Ant should be installed on the system and the "ant" executable shell script should be available in the users path.

Tomcat

Install tomcat into the directory of your choice. The directory in which you install Tomcat itself will be referred to as the "$CATALINA_HOME". We recommend to install Tomcat version 4.0. More details about tomcat installation is avaliable in here.

Once all of the prerequisite software is installed as described above, the installation of Metacat can begin. First you must have a current version of the source distribution of Metacat. You can get it two ways. Authorized users can check it out of the NCEAS CVS system under the module name metacat. The command is as follows:

cvs checkout -P metacat

Edit build.xml File

Once you have either checked out or unzipped and untarred the source distribution, you can begin the installation process. Change into the metacat directory and edit the file called "build.xml". You will need to change a number of configuration properties to match the setup on your system. If you are using oracle, you'll need to customize the properties in the "oracle" target. If you are using Postgres, you'll need to customize the properties in the "postgres" target. All users will need to customize the properties in the "config" target.

The properties that you need to change will include jdbc-connect, dbDriver, dbAdapter, oracle_home, jdbc, tomcat, webapps, context, user, server, systemidserver, web-base-url, and default-style. Each is described in detail below. You should also verify that the jar file properties mentioned in the remainder of the config target are accessible at the paths listed -- the defaults will usually work.

Note that the build file is preconfigured to install Metacat either using Oracle or PostgreSQL as a backend database. To change the database system, simply change the 'depends' attribute of the 'config' target to be the name of the database target that you wish to use (either 'oracle' or 'postgresql'). If you wish to use a different database system, add a new target for your database with the needed parameters and actions then add it to the 'depends' attribute.

• The jdbc-connect parameter is the JDBC connection string needed to connect to your database.
• The dbDriver parameter is the name of the JDBC driver class to use for connections to your database.
• The dbAdapter parameter is the name of the Metacat adapter class to be used to communicate with a particular database.
• The oracle_home parameter is the location that oracle is installed on your system.
• The jdbc parameter is the location of your jdbc driver jar file.
• The tomcat parameter is the location in which tomcat is installed.
• The webapps parameter is the location in which your tomcat servlet contexts are installed. This is typically "$TOMCAT_HOME/webapps".
• The context parameter is the name of the servlet context in which you want metacat to be installed. This will determine the installation directory for the servlet and many of the urls that are used to access the installed Metacat server.
• The user and password parameters are the database user name that you set up to use Metacat, for example an Oracle username and password.
• The tomcatversion is the version of your Tomcat. You should put tomcat3 or tomcat4 here.
• Web-base-url is the URL from which you want to load any stylesheets or supplementary images.
• Server is the http address on which Metacat is running (note that you should not include the 'http://' in the server property).
• The systemidserver is the protocol (http or https) and server location to get any DTDs.
• The datafilepath is the directory to store the data file.
• The inlinedatafilepath is the directory to store inline data (This is for EML2).
• The default-style parameter defines the "style-set" that is to be used by default when the qformat parameter is missing or set to "html" during a query. It is set to "knb", which is the only style that ships with the default metacat distribution. If you create your own stylesheets for displaying metacat output, you may want to create a new config file in the config-dir (e.g., mystyle.xml) and then change the default-style to use your custom style (e.g., "mystyle").
• The debuglevel is the control value of debug message. Generally, it will vary from 0 to 70. In level 70, Metacat will desplay all debug messages.
• The forcereplicationwaitingtime is the waiting time for start force replication after uploading a package. Usually we use default value.

• The installdir parameter is the directory in which Ant should install the servlet. It is your "servlet context path" that was defined above.
• Replication path is the relative path to the replication servlet. This should be the name of your servlet followed by "/servlet/replication". For example 'metacat/servlet/replication'.
• The servlet path is the relative path to your servlet as viewed by the Tomcat or Apache web server. Under Tomcat, the form is usually

  /<servlet-context-name>/servlet/metacat

• The html-path is usually the first directory of the servlet-path. The only reason it wouldn't be is if you are doing something with your web server and you want the html served from a different location than where the servlet is located.
• The image-path is where you want the Metacat image files stored. It should be a directory that is accessible by the web server.
• Replication-log is the location at which you want Metacat to place any replication log files. The user that starts Tomcat must have permission to write to this directory.
• The config-dir parameter specifies the location of the configuration files for the "style-sets" feature. It is set by default to the installation directory and generally does not need to be changed.
• The eml-module, eml-version, eml-tag parameters control the installation behavior with respect to EML. You should not need to change these paramters.
• The cvsrootparameter is used when building the distribution and you should not need to change it.

Note: DO NOT add a slash [/] to the end of these paths. Metacat will not function correctly if you do so.

SQL Scripts

You now need to set up the table structure in your database. Change to the metacat/src directory. Then run you RDBMS's SQL utility. In Oracle it is SQLPlus. This tutorial assumes an Oracle database so this example is for SQLPlus. Login as the oracle user that was set up for use with Metacat. At the SQLPlus prompt type the following:

@xmltables.sql;

If the script has run correctly you should be able to type

describe xml_documents

    Name            Null?         Type
    --------------  ------------  ---------------- 
     DOCID          NOT NULL      VARCHAR2(250)
     ROOTNODEID                   NUMBER(20)
     DOCNAME                      VARCHAR2(100)
     DOCTYPE                      VARCHAR2(100)
     DOCTITLE                     VARCHAR2(1000)
     USER_OWNER                   VARCHAR2(100)
     USER_UPDATED                 VARCHAR2(100)
     SERVER_LOCATION              NUMBER(20)
     REV                          NUMBER(10)
     DATE_CREATED                 DATE
     DATE_UPDATED                 DATE
     PUBLIC_ACCESS                NUMBER(1)
     UPDATED                      NUMBER(1)
   

Ant allows compilation and installation to be done in one step. Change into the metacat directory and type:

ant install

You should see a bunch of messages telling you the progress of compilation and installation. When it is done you should see the message BUILD SUCCESSFUL and you should be returned to a UNIX command prompt. If you do not see the message BUILD SUCCESSFUL then there was an error that you need to resolve. This may come up if you are logged in as a user that does not have write access to one or more of the directories that are listed in the build.xml file, or if any of the paths to files are not configured correctly in the "config" target.

Once metacat itself is installed, you should also register the Ecological Metadata Language (EML) DTDs and schemas. This process is done most easily by running:

ant dtdschemasql

This command registers the DTDs' and schemas' location in the metacat server. Your database username and password have to be set correctly for this to work.

Note: The 'data' directory in the installation directory must be writeable by whatever user is running Tomcat or you will not be able to upload data files to the system.

Restart Tomcat

Once you have successfully installed Metacat, there is one more step. Tomcat (and Apache if you have Tomcat integrated with it) must be restarted. To do this, login as the user that runs your tomcat server (often "tomcat"), go to $CATALINA_HOME/bin and type:

   ./shutdown.sh 
   ./startup.sh 
   

    MetacatServlet Initialize
    Context log path="/metadata" :Metacat: init
    MetacatServlet Initialize
   

http://yourserver.yourdomain.com/yourcontext/

http://yourserver.yourdomain.com:8080/yourcontext/