WDB Installation Guide

Now just follow these steps and you will be up and running in no time ....

• Install sybperl ( If you haven't got it already ). Sybperl is a set of user-defined subroutines letting you access a Sybase data server using Perl.
  • Download perl (version 4.036) and compile it. The binary is not enough, you need the object file called uperl.o to link sybperl, so you have to get the source and compile perl your self.
  • Download sybperl and install it. (Just follow the instructions in the README file). Make sure it is a version that works with Perl4
  Now make sure sybperl works ! The sybperl distribution has a subdirectory called './eg' with some examples - try to make them work first ! (This might save you some headache later ...)

• Install a HTTP server ( If you haven't got it already ). WDB was developed and tested on NCSA's HTTP server. But it should work on other HTTP servers supporting CGI scripts.
  Make sure it works ! Try to create a few Web pages and see that you can retrieve them with your Web client. Also make sure that your HTTP server is configured properly to run CGI scripts. Normally you have to tell the server that a special directory contains scripts, so the files there will be executed rather than retrieved as text files !

• Download the WDB distribution, and un-tar it. This will give you a set of sub-directories that needs to be installed by moving them to the appropriate places.

  cgi-bin/

  Move the files in this directory to you HTTP servers CGI-bin directory.

  bin/

  This directory currently only contains the mkfdf script. You need to modify the first line of the script to point to your sybperl executable. Move the mkfdf file in here to a directory in your PATH - or modify your PATH to point to this directory.

  conf/

  This directory contains configuration files for WDB - only the user-id of the HTTP server process needs read access to these. ( - and your database password will be in one of these files, so make sure you protect them adequately ! ) I suggest to move them to ~http/wdb/ (if http is the user running the HTTP server).

  html/

  Move these files to a directory in your WWW tree. (For example /wdb/ in the document root directory.)

  man/

  - man pages. You can install them with your other man pages if you want.

  perl-lib

  This directory contains cgi-lib.pl. This is a copy of Steven E. Brenner's Perl Routines to Manipulate CGI input, if you haven't got it already please install it in you perl library.

• Create a directory to keep the FDF files. This directory does not have to be in the WWW tree, but it should be readable by the HTTP process.

• The first line of the wdb script look like this #!/usr/server/arc/bin/sybperl Change this to point to your sybperl interpreter that you installed earlier, and make sure that wdb is executable (chmod +x wdb)

• Now update the configuration file.

• If you have any problems check the WDB FAQ first.

You are now ready to create some FDF files ....