Metacat Properties Files

Metacat Server has properties that are stored in two general locations. Global properties are held in:

The most dynamic properties are modified using the internal Metacat configuration utility . However, it may be necessary to manually edit a configuration file to update more static values.

The list of properties shown on this page gives the following information about each property:

(* CONTEXT_DIR refers to the directory where the Metacat application code lives. This is a combination of the web application directory and the metacat context directory. This usually looks something like /usr/local/tomcat/webapps/knb. However, your webapps directory could be somewhere besides the tomcat directory and your context could be something other than knb.)

Index

Global Metacat Properties - (metacat.properties)

server.name

Default Value:

localhost

Set Method:

Configuration Utility

Description:

The network host name that will be used to access Metacat. Note that this is not necessarily the physical name of the server running Metacat. The host name should not include the protocol prefix (http://).

Example:

knb.ecoinformatics.org

server.httpPort

Set Method:

Configuration Utility

Description:

The network port that will be used to access Metacat for non-secure (standard) connections. This is usually 80 if Apache web server is running (typical install), and 8080 if Tomcat is running alone, but both Apache and Tomcat could have been configured to listen on alternate ports.

server.httpSSLPort

Set Method:

Configuration Utility

Description:

The network port that will be used to access Metacat for secure connections. This is usually 443 if Apache web server is running (typical install), and 8443 if Tomcat is running alone, but both Apache and Tomcat could have been configured to listen on alternate ports.

application.metacatVersion

Default Value:

1.9.0

Description:

The Metacat version number. usually, this should never be changed. It is set by the build engineer at build time.

application.deployDir

Default Value:

(none)

Set Method:

Configuration Utility

Description:

The directory where web applications are deployed. Many times this is in a directory named "webapps" in the Tomcat installation directory. However, Tomcat may be configured to look in a different directory.

Example:

/usr/local/tomcat/webapps

application.context

Default Value:

(none)

Set Method:

Configuration Utility

Description:

Applications run in individual directories in the applicaton deployment directory. The name of the application directory is the application context. This corresponds to the first part of the war file name (the part before .war). Most commonly, this is "knb", but it can be changed to other things.

application.default-style

Default Value:

default

Set Method:

Configuration Utility

Description:

There are some custom web skins available in Metacat. Typically these are associated with an organizational theme. If there is not a custom skin for your organization, you should leave it as "default".

application.knbSiteURL

Default Value:

http://knb.ecoinformatics.org

Set Method:

Configuration Utility

Description:

The KNB site to redirect to.

Example:

http://knb.ecoinformatics.org

application.datafilepath

Default Value:

/var/metacat/data

Set Method:

Configuration Utility

Description:

This is the directory whera data files will be stored. This should be some directory outside the Metacat installation directories so data files will not get lost when Metacat is upgraded. The data file directory must be writable by the user that starts Tomcat (and thus Metacat).

Example:

/var/metacat/data

application.inlinedatafilepath

Default Value:

/var/metacat/inline-data

Set Method:

Configuration Utility

Description:

This is the directory where inline data files will be stored. Inline data files are created from data that is embedded in EML metadata. This should be some directory outside the Metacat installation directories so data files will not get lost when Metacat is upgraded. For clarity of data, this should probably not be the same as application.datafilepath. The data file directory must be writable by the user that starts Tomcat (and thus Metacat).

Example:

/var/metacat/inline-data

application.cgiDir

Default Value:

/cgi

Description:

This is the directory that is configured in Apache web server to point to Metacat cgi executables. The directory is given relative to the Metacat context directory since the Metacat cgi scripts are installed with the application code. For example, if Metacat is installed in /usr/local/tomcat/knb, then an application.cgiDir of /cgi would point to
/usr/local/tomcat/knb/cgi-dir

database.connectionURI

Default Value:

jdbc:postgresql://localhost/metacat

Set Method:

Configuration Utility

Description:

The jdbc connection URI for the main database instance of Metacat. The uri is formatted like:
jdbc:<database_type>:thin@<your_server_name>:1521:<metacat_database_name>
An empty database must have been created prior to Metacat configuration.

Example:

jdbc:postgresql://yourserver.yourdomain.edu/metacat

database.user

Default Value:

(none)

Set Method:

Configuration Utility

Description:

The user for the main database instance of Metacat. The user must have already been created on the database.

Example:

metacat-user

database.password

Default Value:

(none)

Set Method:

Configuration Utility

Description:

The password of the user for the main database instance of Metacat. The password must have already been created for the user.

Example:

securepassword4843

database.type

Default Value:

(none)

Set Method:

Configuration Utility

Description:

The type of database you are running. Currently, there are two supported types, Oracle and Postgres.

database.driver

Default Value:

(none)

Set Method:

Configuration Utility

Description:

The JDBC driver to be used to access the main database instance of Metacat. There is one of these associated with each type of database.

Example:

org.postgresql.Driver

database.adapter

Default Value:

(none)

Set Method:

Configuration Utility

Description:

The adapter class that allows Metacat to access your database type. There is one of these associated with each type of database.

Example:

edu.ucsb.nceas.dbadapter.PostgresqlAdapter

database.scriptsuffix.<database_type>

Default Value:

database.scriptsuffix.postgres=postgres.sql
database.scriptsuffix.oracle=oracle.sql

Set Method:

Configuration Utility

Description:

There is a database.scriptsuffix entry for every supported type of database. These tell the system which database scripts to run when installing or updating database schema.

Example:

postgres.sql

database.upgradeVersion.<database_version>

Default Value:

    database.upgradeVersion.0.0.0=xmltables,loaddtdschema
    database.upgradeVersion.1.2.0=upgrade-db-to-1.2
    database.upgradeVersion.1.3.0=upgrade-db-to-1.3
    database.upgradeVersion.1.4.0=upgrade-db-to-1.4
    database.upgradeVersion.1.5.0=upgrade-db-to-1.5
    database.upgradeVersion.1.6.0=upgrade-db-to-1.6
    database.upgradeVersion.1.7.0=upgrade-db-to-1.7
    database.upgradeVersion.1.8.0=upgrade-db-to-1.8
    database.upgradeVersion.1.9.0=upgrade-db-to-1.9

Set Method:

Configuration Utility

Description:

There is a database.scriptsuffix entry for every metacat database schema version. (Note that a schema version corresponds to an application version.) These tell the system which database scripts to run when installing or updating database schema.

Example:

upgrade-db-to-1.2

database.initialConnections

Description:

The number of initial connection that Metacat creates to the database.

database.incrementConnections

Description:

The number of connections that are created when Metacat needs more connections.

database.maximumConnections

Description:

The maximum number of database connections Metacat can make.

database.maximumConnectionAge

Default Value:

120000

Description:

The maximum time in milliseconds that a database connection can live.

database.maximumConnectionTime

Default Value:

60000

Description:

The maximum time in milliseconds that a database connection can accumulate in actual connection time.

database.maximumUsageNumber

Description:

The maximum number of times a single connection can be used.

database.numberOfIndexingThreads

Description:

The number of threads available for indexing.

database.indexingTimerTaskTime

Default Value:

604800000

Description:

The time in milliseconds between indexing.

database.indexingInitialDelay

Default Value:

3600000

Description:

The delay in milliseconds before first indexing is executed.

database.maximumIndexDelay

Default Value:

5000

Description:

The time in milliseconds that an indexing thread will wait when it can't get a doc id before retrying the indexing.

database.runDBConnectionRecycleThread

Description:

Determines whether the database connection pool should run a thread to recycle connections. Possible values are "on" and "off"

database.cycleTimeOfDBConnection

Default Value:

30000

Description:

The time in milliseconds between connection recycling runs.

database.queryignoredparams

Default Value:

enableediting,foo

Description:

Parameters to ignore in a structured xml query.

Example:

enableediting

database.usexmlindex

Default Value:

true

Description:

Determines whether to use xml indexes when finding documents. Possible values are true and false.

database.appResultsetSize

Default Value:

7000

Description:

Determines the number of results that get sent back to an application from a query.

database.webResultsetSize

Default Value:

7000

Description:

Determines the number of results that get sent back to a web browser from a query.

database.xmlReturnfieldCount

Description:

If the results of a query have been returned more times than database.xmlReturnfieldCount, then those results will be inserted into the xml_queryresult table in the database.

database.queryresultStringLength

Default Value:

500000

Description:

This is used to set the max size of the query result string in the queryresult table. This should be set to some number less than 4000 if an Oracle database is being used.

database.queryresultCacheSize

Description:

The number of query results that will be cached.

database.queryCacheOn

Description:

Determines whether query caching is turned on. Acceptible values are "on" and "off"

auth.class

Default Value:

edu.ucsb.nceas.metacat.AuthLdap

Description:

The class that is used for user authentication. Currently, only the AuthLdap class is included in the Metacat distribution, but it is possible for an admin to implement other authentication strategies by implementing a Java class that extends the AuthInterface interface and rebuilding Metacat.

Example:

edu.ucsb.nceas.metacat.AuthLdap

auth.timeoutMinutes

Description:

The number of minutes that a user will stay logged in to Metacat without any activity.

ldap.administrators

Default Value:

(none)

Set Method:

Configuration Utility

Description:

A colon separated list of The ldap users or groups that have administrative privileges to Metacat. Note that during the intial installation of Metacat, the installer will be asked to enter this value. They must enter a user or group that they have access to, or they will not be allowed to continue with the configuration.

Example:

uid=youruser,o=NCEAS,dc=ecoinformatics,dc=org

cn=yourgroup,o=NCEAS,dc=ecoinformatics,dc=org

ldap.url