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PcmPortal

PcmPortal is a middle tier process that implements SDL Contenta server-side logic.

PcmPortal is one of the main elements of the Contenta Server package. It serves as the middleman between multiple Contenta clients and the database server.

When developing SDL Contenta tools or applications, start and use a portal that is not the production portal—that is, the portal in use by SDL Contenta users. It is recommended that each developer start his/her own portal to track messages,. This makes it easier to identify the processes used by your portal when you need or want to kill a process.

Required Variables:Inherits the current environment
Process:PcmPortal

Verification:

To display the PcmPortal process(e)s and current associated socket number(s), at a command prompt type:
ps -ef | grep -i portal

Example system response:

root 768 752 0 17:11:42 ? 0:00 /pdm/bin/PcmPortal -s -S6050
root 752 1 2 17:07:17 ? 0:01 /pdm/bin/PcmPortal -s -S6050
sysadmin 755 748 0 17:07:31 ? 0:00 PcmPortal -s -S6055 -d1
sysadmin 774 734 0 17:11:56 pts/5 0:00 grep ortal

In the above example there are two instances of PcmPortal number 6050 (this is the default socket number). This indicates that there are two connections to the database using socket 6050, in this case both by the root user. There is one instance of a connection to the database on socket 6055. Portal 6055 was executed by the sysadmin user, in debug mode as noted by the -d1 switch.

When connecting through SDL Contenta Explorer, the socket number is specified in the Login window under Options. When connecting through the portal command line utility, pcmcmd, the socket number must be specified on the command line.

It you start a portal without the -Snum switch, it uses the default socket number 6050.

The portal is executed as the user that started the process. On UNIX this is typically established in the startup scripts. This is important because temporary file locations and permissions are determined by the user. It may be necessary to adjust how the PcmPortal is started to fix problems created by the initial install.

To execute the portal on a Linux server:At a command prompt, type:
source $XYV_PDM_ROOT/bin/pdm.cshrc
/pdm/bin/PcmPortal -s -Snum
Where num is the socket number, for example:
PcmPortal -s -S6052
Example system response:
15444: Portal started
15445: Successful network connection made
To start a portal in debug mode, use the -d switch. Values for the -d switch are:
ValueDescription
1Basic debugging; echo commands and responses
2Socket debugging; echo results of read/write system calls.
4Detailed socket debugging; dump the send/receive buffer of each command and response in raw ASCII hex.
8Create a log file for each PcmPortal process in the directory from which the portal server was started. The name of the log file is PcmPortal.pid.log, where pid is the UNIX process ID of the corresponding portal process.