Steven Shand wrote:
I'm having a look at Xindice and like what I see so far. However I'm pretty confused with the different modes of operation.
I skipped the version 1.0 downloads and went straight to 1.1b4.
Good start.
I did this primarily because I was led to believe that the architecture was different with versions 1.1 onwards. I didn't really want to look at version 1.0 if things were changing. Am I right?
Yes.
My use case is this. My application is a web application running successfully under 2.2 and 2.3 spec servlet containers(tomcat in this example). Ideally, I would like to avoid running Xindice as an additional webapp. I hoped I would be able to run Xindice inside my webapp.
It's totally possible.
I copied classes and dependant jar files into my webapp, copied relevant sections of web.xml into my web.xml and when starting tomcat, I get messages telling me the server has successfully started and my db directory gets created. All seems fine but this is where the confusion starts!!
You started an Xindice servlet, which starts database and waits ("listens") for external clients requests. You, actually, do not need this, but you can use it in this mode also.
I'm not sure how to connect. Most of the problems seem to arise from somewhere in code that is hard-coded to expect the server to be running with the url mapping of /xindice.....
As I've read more of the docs and mail archives, it appears that I probably shouldn't be running the db from the servlet but running in standalone mode! But the docs also state:
' Starting from 1.1, Xindice is not a standalone server anymore. '
It means it does not comes with own socket listener, but runs on top of any other servlet engine.
So, to cut a long story short, is it possible to embed Xindice into my existing webapp. If so, should I be using the 'org.apache.xindice.client.xmldb.DatabaseImpl' driver or the 'org.apache.xindice.client.xmldb.embed.DatabaseImpl'? And what would the connection url look like?
You have got three (ok, four) options now.
1. You already have Xindice servlet running in the same JVM as your application. It means that external clients (which know the URL) as well as your application can all connect to this DB instance. For your app, use driver class org.apache.xindice.client.xmldb.managed.DatabaseImpl and connection URL xindice-managed:///db/
External clients can connect using xmlrpc driver, URL xindice://host:port/db/, and you need to specify correct PROP_SERVICE_LOCATION on driver instance (see javadoc).
2. You can use driver class org.apache.xindice.client.xmldb.embed.DatabaseImpl, with setProperty(PROP_XINDICE_MANAGED, "true"), and URL xindice-embed:///db/
This configuraiton is identical to the first one. Check source of managed.DatabaseImpl and see for yourself - it is extended from embed.DatabaseImpl.
3. You can remove Xindice servlet from your web.xml and use embedded driver. Driver class org.apache.xindice.client.xmldb.embed.DatabaseImpl, URL xindice-embed:///db/ . No properties has to be set.
In this scenario, database will be loaded on first access. You have to shutdown database on your app shutdown (shutdown() method on CollectionImpl).
4. Same as 3, but you can write code which starts and stops database yourself, and use managed driver. This is similar to 1, but instead of Xindice servlet you have own code. Example code is in org.apache.xindice.server.ManagedServer
See documentation (javadoc) for drivers for other properties.
Vadim
