zserver: Configuration

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The zserver initialization file contains several parameters which can be configured at run time. The file is called zserver.ini by default, but the -i command line parameter, allows a different name to be used, if desired.

There are two information blocks in the file --- [Default] and the diagnostic message block, denoted [1.2.840.10003.3.1]. Do not attempt to modify any of the parameters in the diagnostic block unless you fully understand what your are doing. All user-configurable parameters are in [Default].

DebugLevel: Controls the amount of informative messages the server sends to the console. The default is 0, which corresponds to no output. Values larger than 5 are unlikely to be useful to anyone but programmers.
ServerType: Can be STANDALONE or INETD. STANDALONE is the default, and runs the server as a parent process, spawning child processes to handle incoming connections. INETD is a single process server which could be used to run the server from inetd (hence the name) except that the startup time is significant. INETD mode is useful for debugging.
Port: The IP Port number on which the server runs
MaxSessions: The maximum number of simultaneous (child) sessions to allow (ignored if ServerMode=INETD).
SAPI: The location of the database configuration file sapi.ini
AccessLog: The location of the server log file
TimeOut: The maximum amount of time (in seconds) to hold an inactive connection open
DBList: A list of databases to mount. Each entry in the list should have a corresponding entry in sapi.ini. The format is a list of database names, separated by commas. The names refer to block names in sapi.ini (see the following section).

2.2 sapi.ini

The database description file contains information to be used by the Search API for search and retrieval. Databases may be local or may be located on other machines. Databases may be lists of other databases. The only information block in sapi.ini is [Default]. The name of the file must be given in the SAPI parameter in the server initialization file.

The information necessary to describe a database for the Search API depends on the type of database. This release of zserver supports four database types - ISEARCH, ZCLIENT, METABASE and SCRIPT. Each will be described below.

In general, the description block for a database starts with the name of the database --- the same name given in the DBList parameter in zserver.ini.

Type=ISEARCH

Location: Path to the Isearch index files
FieldMaps: List of file names containing the associations between Z39.50 numeric use attribute values and Isearch field names (see below).

[test]
Type=ISEARCH
Location=/home/cnidr/src/Isite/db
FieldMaps=/home/cnidr/src/Isite/bin/bib1.fgdcmap,\
  /home/cnidr/src/Isite/bin/gils.fgdcmap,\
  /home/cnidr/src/Isite/bin/geo.fgdcmap

Type=ZCLIENT

Location: The IP name or address of the Z39.50 server
Port: The IP port number for the server
DBName: The name of the database to search at the server

[test]
Type=ZCLIENT
Location=24.3.20.241
Port=2100
DBName=test

Type=METABASE

Location: A list of one or more remote databases, separated by commas, in the format host:port/dbname

[test]
Type=METABASE
Location=24.3.20.241:2100/test+24.3.20.241:2100/usgswrd

Type=SCRIPT

Location: Path to the Isearch index files
GetFull: Name of the script to retrieve a full record
Results: Name of the file to contain results
FieldMaps: List of file names containing the associations between Z39.50 numeric use attribute values and Isearch field names (see below).

Field Maps