Thunderstone Search Appliance Manual

Managing DBWalker Configurations

Choosing to either edit a configuration or create a new one takes you to a listing page where you can change the facets of a configuration.

• General Information

  The General Information section contains things that don't pertain directly to the remote database itself.

  • Configuration Name

    If you're creating a new configuration, you will be asked to enter a name. It is used when specifying which group of settings you want to use when DBWalker is invoked, but has no bearing beyond that. Names may contain letters, numbers, dashes, and underscores (no spaces).

  • Stylesheet

    Specifies which XSL stylesheet to use. You can only use stylesheets that you've already uploaded. Please see the Managing DBWalker Stylesheets (pg. here) for more information.

  • Max Rows per Page

    Sets a maximum number of rows to use on a single index page. If there are more rows than is allowed on a single page, next and back links are used as necessary to see the rest of the links.

    This is because if a table contains 10 million rows, just generating the index page can take huge amounts of time. DBWalker can be told to only deal with 100 rows at a time, keeping it from getting bogged down.

  • Appliance Link

    If you are using an internal interface to access the Parametric Search Appliance's administrator interface, this can allow you to force the DBWalker to be walked through an interface that will be visible to external users. Usually the default for this will be fine.

    If administrators are accessing the Parametric Search Appliance through an internal-only interface, let's say internalonly.example.com, then the DBWalker will get walked as http://internalonly.example.com/texis.... This will work fine for the walk itself, but when external users use search, they will see results referencing internalonly.example.com, which they won't be able to access.

    By setting Appliance Link to something like www.example.com/texis (or whatever external users will be able to see), then the DBWalker will get walked with the proper links.

• Database Information

  The database information section collects information about how to connect to your remote database.

  • Type

    This determines which JDBC driver will be loaded. DBWalker comes with support for Oracle (11g and 12c), Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and Texis.

    The Oracle (dedicated) type is used to connect to an Oracle database through dedicated mode instead of the default shared mode. There is a slight performance disadvantage to this, and should only be used when the ordinary Oracle type does not work.

    Alternatively, you can select [jdbcConnect] as the type, which lets you manually enter the JDBC Connection String. The Host, Port, and DB/Service values are all contained in the JDBC connection string, so the Connect String field replaces all 3 of them.

  • Host / Connect String The contents of this field depend on what Type you have selected.

    Database Type	field contents
    Oracle, Sybase, PostgreSQL, MySQL, or MS SQL Server	the hostname of the machine you're connecting to, or its IP address.
    Texis	the hostname and full path to the JDBC script on the remote server, i.e. host.example.com/texis/jdbc.
    [jdbcConnect]	the full JDBC connection string.

    If the type is [jdbcConnect], then this field is Connect String, which lets you specify the full JDBC connection string. This is useful if you already know the JDBC connection string for your remote DB and don't want to have to break it down into hostname, port, etc. The exact formatting of this string differs for each remote database type.

  • Port The port number that the remote database is listening to.

    Oracle, Sybase, PostgreSQL, MySQL, or MS SQL Server	the port to use, or leave blank for the default.
    Texis	unused, already specified as part of the Host field.
    [jdbcConnect]	unused, already specified as part of the Connect String field.

  • DB/Service The contents of this field is dependent on your database type.

    Sybase, MS SQL Server, PostgreSQL, or MySQL	the name of the database you want to connect to.
    Oracle	the name of the service to connect to.
    Texis	the full path to the remote database, i.e. C:\morph3\texis\testdb\ or /var/db/testdb.
    [jdbcConnect]	unused, already specified as part of the Connect String field.

  • Username

    The username to give to the remote database. If this is left blank, username/password will be asked from the user when a request is made. Please see the "DBWalker Authentication Overview" section (pg. here) for more information.

    If connecting to a Microsoft SQL Server database, it's possible to enter DOMAIN\user as the username to use domain authentication, where DOMAIN is the domain that the server belongs to.

  • Password

    The password to give to the remote database. If this is left blank, username/password will be asked from the user when a request is made. Please see the "DBWalker Authentication Overview" section (pg. here) for more information.

• Table Information

  The table information section collects information about the table that you want to access.

  • Table

    the name of the SQL table you want to retrieve data from.

  • Fields

    An optional list of fields to retrieve from the table. By default, all fields are retrieved. This is specified as a comma-separated list, as you would use in the beginning of a SQL query.

  • Where clause

    Allows you to limit the data returned by DBWalker. It is not limited to using the fields specified in the fields section. The where clause should not contain the SQL keyword WHERE, just the conditional clause. For example, if your table has an id and a name, you could set Fields to name and Where clause to id>100 to only get names of records where the id is greater than 100.

  • Key Field

    Specifies the "key" field of the database. This field should be able to uniquely identify each record in the table, allowing DBWalker to create a list of links to each record from a single index page. If no key field is specified, the entire contents of the table will be displayed.