Administration Overview

Much of DataCaster administration deals with managing and maintaining the data in the database. Many of the tools you would need with a database are included with DataCaster, along with a set of tools for managing the distributed aspects, including remote access and usage control.

This section provides a brief overview of the various tools.

Managing Databases

Tools to create and drop databases are provided with command-line tools, as well as the console. In the default configuration, databases are created automatically when accessed for the first time. This can be disabled if required via DbPrefs.xml.

WebAdmin console provides tools to start and stop databases on a running server.

Managing Users and Roles

DataCaster users can be created using one of WebAdmin, command-line console or command-line tool. Please check the documentation of each of these tools for more information.

Roles can be added for any user. Rioles are not created independent of users, i.e. roles come into being when added for a user. The same set of tools can be used to add roles for a user.

Database Backup

DataCaster provides tools for on-demand archive (dump) and restore. This can be used with any of WebAdmin, command-line console or command-line tool. Please check the documentation of each of these tools for more information.

DataCaster allows administrators to setup automatic periodic archives of individual databases, so that recent data can be recovered in case of disk and other major failures. This can be setup uting WebAdmin, or the dbprefs configuration file.

Deploying Web Applications

Web applications use the Tomcat server method of deployment, and can be deployed by placing the war in the Tomcat webapps directory. The Datacaster jar is available in the system classpath of the Tomcat server, and hence available to all web applications.

Using Server Applications

DataCaster supports server applications that need to be co-resident with the server and the server databases.

WebAdmin provides tools to install, start and stop server applications. Server applications need to implement the DataCasterApplication interface in order to be deployable as a DataCaster server application. Please see the WebAdmin documentation for more information.

Publishing Data and Granting Remote Access

As a distributed database, DataCaster allows users on remote DataCaster? servers or access tables and views on this server. For example, this allows users or applications on remote web sites to access data on your site, and vice-versa.

Please see the Remote Access Administration section for information on settup access for remote users and applications.

Usage Control

For anonymous or authenticated remote access, particularly across administrative domains, it is essential to control what a database user is allowed to do. Since SQL queries can easily be written to hog resources on the server among other things, there is a need to limit the resources used by any given remote user.

DataCaster supports multiple types of resource usage control for both local and remote users. Please see the configuration reference for more information on setting usage control.