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eXistDb & oXygen

They really do like their silly capitalization don’t they?

eXistDb is a XML database. It’s useful for storing documents and searching or processing them, especially if they don’t really fit in a traditional SQL database. The Wilde Trials and other TEI projects use eXist as the storage layer. It is open-source and freely available.

oXygen is an XML editor with built-in schemas for TEI, XHTML, and other document formats. It also supports XSLT and XQuery transformations via different engines and validation via RelaxNG, Schematron, and loads of other schemas. It isn’t open-source, nor is it free. But the library has a site license so shouldn’t cost the DHIL anything to use.

Installing eXistDb

The eXistDb developers distribute their software via BinTray. The page lists a number of release versions. Navigate to the most recent stable release1 and download the -setup-VERSION.jar. This will give you an application that is easy to configure and run.

Once the .jar file is finished downloading, double click on it and follow the installation instructions. The application will be installed in /Applications/eXist-db because developers aren’t ever consistent with naming things.

To run the Wilde Trails application, you must make one change to an eXistDb configuration file. Open /Applications/eXist-db/conf.xml in a text editor and look for this element.

<xquery enable-java-binding="no" disable-deprecated-functions="no"
        enable-query-rewriting="yes" backwardCompatible="no"
        enforce-index-use="always"
        raise-error-on-failed-retrieval="no">

Change enable-java-binding="no" to enable-java-binding="yes", save the file, and restart eXistDb if you need to.

eXistDb listens on port 8080 by default. If you have installed Apache <section-apache> following the directions there it may also be listening on port 8080. Only one program can listen on a port at a time, so either stop Apache (brew services stop apache) or change Apache or eXistDb to listen on another port.

To change eXistDb’s port, open /Applications/eXist-db/tools/jetty/etc/jetty-http.xml and change the port number on line 38. In the examples below, line breaks and indentation have been added to improve readability.

<Set name="port">
  <Property name="jetty.http.port" deprecated="jetty.port">
    <Default>
      <SystemProperty name="jetty.port" default="8080"/>
    </Default>
  </Property>
</Set>

Using eXistDb

Most access to the eXistDb service is through a web interface. If you visit

  • accessing the database
  • monitor
  • exide
  • installing an app - eg. wilde data
  • symlinking an app - eg. wilde app

Installing & Using oXygen

  1. download
  2. license
  3. install
  4. connect to exist
  5. create a project

Footnotes

  1. The preview releases are usually named with a -RC suffix, like 4.0.0-RC1. They should work fine, but may cause compatibility problems. Stick to the most recent, non-preview version. ↩