The development environment

When you have the Oracle and Contenta software installed and configured, you can configure a development environment in which to work and test your program(s).

The following are recommendations configuring your development environment.

Create an alternate, test location for the encaps directory

On UNIX servers, create a custom copy of the /pdm/bin/pdm.cshrc file and set the XYV_PDM_ENCAPS_DIR variable to a test location.

Tools are located in the Contenta encaps directory; when you add a tool in pcmadmin, the Contenta application expects the tool (file) to be located in the Contenta encaps directory. You may want to keep the tools you are developing in a separate directory for testing.

For example, you may create a subdirectory in encaps then, when you configure the tool in pcmadmin, you can specify the encaps subdirectory. For instance, suppose the tool executable is named experiment.pl and the subdirectory under encaps is named MyDevelopment, the command you would specify in pcmadmin may be:
interp noflash perl MyDevelopment/experiment.pl

Another approach is to configure Contenta to use a different encaps directory. You can do this in the Contenta Client Login window Options.Refer to Accessing the default Login Options in the Contenta Client Login window.

Use a separate portal connection
Use a separate portal connection from the one being used by Contenta users. To view messages from the portal, run the portal in debug mode. To do this, refer to PcmPortal for UNIX systems and PcmPortal, the XyEnterpriseParlanceServer for Windows systems.
Create a database
Create a database or import the sample database, apiguide (provided by RWS) for testing—or at minimum, create a development hierarchy in the existing database. You can copy objects from the production environment into the new hierarchy for testing.

Refer to the Contenta Administration User section of the Contenta documentation for information about creating and/ or importing a database or refer to Importing and Creating a Contenta Database in this document.

If creating a new database, refer to theContenta Dynamic Import User section of the Contenta documentation for information about importing documents and populating your database.

Refer to the Contenta Explorer User section of the Contenta documentation for information about creating a hierarchy and copying objects.

Gather necessary information about your system configuration
Gather the necessary information about your system configuration, for example, the server node name, database node name, database name, SID (Oracle only) and/or ODBC DSN, location of your Contenta software, and so on.

Refer to the Understanding Contenta in the UNIX Environment or Understanding Contenta in the Windows Environment of the Extending Contenta section of the Contenta documentation.

Consider the following when designing, creating and implementing a Contenta application:
  • What is your site’s configuration? (Server and Client)
  • Are operating system-independent applications a requirement?
  • Who will use the application?

    What access must the user have to run the tool?

    Will the tool need a license token?

  • From where will the tool be run?

    Will it be accessed from a menu or run from the command line?

    Is it a base tool or should it be added to specific toolboxes?

  • What are the data requirements?

    What types of objects are needed?

    If custom objects are required, for what are the objects to be used?

  • What errors can occur and how are they handled?

    What recovery is needed?

  • How will the custom application manage product updates?
  • What are the performance requirements?
  • Will this be a client or server tool?
  • Are there any environment variables that will need to be added to the (UNIX) pdm.cshrc file or the (Windows) system variable list?