Setup single dashboard on the web server
We already have a detailed tutorial on how to setup InfoCaptor on the web-server and we receive lot of requests on how to setup or put the dashboards on the web. This server setup guide is quite comprehensive and requires the need to install the repository objects on the database and hence can be little time consuming.
This alternative tutorial is a shortcut to just test the web-server install. It is not a replacement to the repository install.
For e.g. If you are evaluating InfoCaptor and have created a test dashboard and would like to see how it behaves when deployed on the web then follow the steps below.
- First download the Dashboard Server Files
You need a webserver (Apache or IIS or anything that can serve PHP pages). If you would like to setup a webserver on your PC then try this excellent free tool http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpdev5
PHPDEV installs a local Apache webserver so you can just create directory under www and copy files.
- First download InfoCaptor Dashboard Designer on your PC or laptop
- Create your Dashboard and for example, let us name the dashboard file as “my_dashboard.icv” (all InfoCaptor dashboard files have .icv extension)
Since we are going to place the dashboard files on the server, it is recommended that all the names are lowercase and there are no blanks in the name (replace blanks with underscore ‘_’)
Let us assume the following
- Your webserver is serving the following domain http://www.myserver.com
- You will place all the dashboard files in the directory “/dashboards”
- Your dashboard file is “my_dashboard.icv”
- Your database host is located at “mycompany.myserver.com” . If the database is on your own PC or machine then you may use “localhost”. (yellow)
- Your database port is “3306″ (green)
- Your database name is “my_database” (blue)
- Your database user name is “my_user”
- Your database password is “my_user_password”
- Unzip the infocaptor_server_files.zip in a directory and Edit the “single_dashboard_on_server.php” file in notepad or any editor.
- This is how the file should look like when you open it
- Edit the second line
- ———————————————————
- and change it to point to your server location {http://www.myserver.com/dashboards}
- ———————————————————
- You may delete or comment lines 15,16,17 depending on which database you wish to connect.
- ———————————————————
- Edit the argument dashboard_file_name and point it to your dashboard_file_name such as my_dashboard.icv
- ———————————————————
- Edit the dashboard_base_path argument to point to your dashboard directory on webserver http://www.myserver.com/dashboards/
- ———————————————————
- And finally provide the database connection arguments
- db_connect_name=”my_connection”
- db_driver=”MySQL – com.mysql.jdbc.Driver” (NOTE: use the appropriate driver string as mentioned in the php file)
- db_user=”my_user”
- db_password=”my_user_password”
- db_database_host=”mycompany.myserver.com”
- db_database_port=”3306″
- db_database_name=”my_database”
Here is how a sample looks like
NOTE: db_driver strings for relevant databases
- “Oracle – oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver”
- “MySQL – com.mysql.jdbc.Driver”
- “MS Access – sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver”
- “Excel File – sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver”
- “SQL Server5 – net.sourceforge.jtds.jdbc.Driver”
- “ODBC – sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver”
- “Sybase3 – net.sourceforge.jtds.jdbc.Driver”
and so on.
Save the single_dashboard_on_server.php file and then transfer all the files in the zip archive to the webserver directory
You can now launch your dashboard by pointing the following URL in your browser
The dashboard will open up using Java webstart.
If you need to setup the complete repository which will allow you to create users, assign roles to users, assign dashboards to each user then you need to follow this setup guide
Tags: dashboards, web dashboards, download dashboards, design dashboards, webstart dashboards, server dashboardsquickbooks,peachtree,sugarcrm,small business
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