The following provides the different steps which are necessary to take to make a complete installation of WebDB
gunzip) and unpackage (using tar -xpf) the distribution in a suitable directory.
SETTINGS.pl file and change things to suit your installation. Note that some directories must have certain permissions.
lpmake install. This creates the CGI executables, creates the target directories, and copies several files to their destinations in these directories. In order to ease this process it is highly recommendable both ciaoc and lpmake are reachable through the PATH environment variable.
DBDESC directory defined in SETTINGS.pl. Using the file dbserver:dbtables_desc.pl as a template, create a new one in this directory defining the relations/fields of your database. Note that Prolog syntax must be respected in this file. This can also be done through WebDB's administration interface.
DBHOME/private (DBHOME is defined in SETTINGS.pl) will contain the scripts which allow the querying and management of the database. You will probably want to protect it with an HTTP password. In the distribution directory utils you can find the source of a program for manipulating password files for NCSA httpd.
Ideally, DBHOME/private should not be readable by anyone (but needs to be readable by the httpd, of course).
Besides, note that, in SETTINGS.pl, to prevent undesired downloading of the DBDATA, DBDESC and DBTYPES files it's quite advisable to set DBDESCDATA to some different directory from DBHOME which is not under the public_html directory tree.
DBHOME and DBHOME/private to be run from a browser. Also, the user under which the httpd is run needs to have write permission in DBADD and in directories DBHOME/private, DBDESC and DBDATA.
make clean in the source directory.
A very brief summary of usage (you should consult the relevant sections of the manual for a full explanation):
DBURL/private/maintenance.html (DBURL is defined in SETTINGS.pl). If the database server has not been started yet (which can be checked by seeing if a correct response is received following the link System Status) start one by selecting the link Start the System.
DBURL/dbcommonselection.cgi.
Extensive customization of the appearance of the database pages is possible:
DBURL/private/maintenance.html (or edit manually the file DBDESC/dbserver:text_option-3.pl).
DBHOME directory. You can change these files (between the body tags) to change the appearance of the HTML pages. The title of each template file explains what the template is used for, and lists the template variables between parenthesis. In these files, the template variables are written like this <V>varname</V> if they appear in normal text or like _varname, if they appear as an attribute or attribute value of a tag. Note that all URLs must be relative to the DBHOME directory.
You can change these templates by hand or using an HTML editor. Beware, however, of WYSIWYG HTML editors! Always check that they have not arbitrarily changed attributes, tag ordering, etc.
After changing some templates, you can load the new files into the running db server by selecting the appropriate link in the maintenance page. This will also recreate the maintenance page (remember to reload if the browser cache is activated).
If an unexpected response is obtained, you may check the database server log file DBHOME/private/dbserver.log. For further, persistent problems subscribe to ciao-users@clip.dia.fi.upm.es{}
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