Introduction

The DSA/Catalog web application relies upon the following software components, which must be installed and configured before installing the DSA.

Java Virtual Machine

Java version 1.5.x (possibly known as Java SE JDK 5.0 on the Sun website). Available from http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp.

Please note that DSA/Catalog should NOT be run in Java 1.4. Although the DSA may seem to work under Java 1.4, it will be subject to overflow errors when attempting to return large results files.

Web Service Manager

As the DSA/Catalog web application is provided in "Web Archive" (WAR) form, it needs a web service manager or container to present itself to the web. We have used and tested it with Tomcat.

Tomcat Server

We recommend Tomcat version 5.0.28 or 5.5.20.

Available from http://tomcat.apache.org/.

We have explicitly tested the current DSA release on linux under the following configurations, as part of the development cycle:

Tomcat versionJava version
Tomcat 5.0.28Java 1.5.0_06
Tomcat 5.5.20Java 1.5.0_06

Special notes for tomcat 5.0.28

Note that if you are using tomcat 5.0.28, you will probably need to set the following java system property:

                javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory=com.sun.org.apache.xalan.internal.xsltc.trax.TransformerFactoryImpl
              

You can add this property to the JAVA_OPTS environment variable for the user account that runs tomcat; for example, if you currently have the following JAVA_OPTS environment variable:

                export JAVA_OPTS="-server"
              

you should change this to:

                export JAVA_OPTS="-server -Djavax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory=com.sun.org.apache.xalan.internal.xsltc.trax.TransformerFactoryImpl"
              

Remember to restart tomcat after making the change. Consult your local system administrator if you are unsure about how to check/set environment variables.

Other configurations

Other configurations may work and we are always grateful to hear of configurations that are/aren't compatible with the latest release - please email astrogrid_dsa@star.le.ac.uk.