Installing the Web Application Framework example

NOTE: The "bugdb" sample was written very quickly and is not complete.
      It's sole purpose is to illustrate the techniques described in the
      TechWave presentation.
      While I've tried to make the program work in a useful way, it has
      a number of missing features, and very likely has a number of bugs.


1. You have to have Apache and modperl installed.
   I've had good success with the binaries included with Red Hat 7.x,
   but it's reasonably easy to build apache and modperl from source.

2. Install libapreq.
   The source is in this distribution. Installation is of the traditionally
   perlish: perl Makefile.PL, make, make install variety.

3. Install Sys::Signal (used by Apache::Sybase::ConPool)

4. Edit httpd.conf to turn on modperl handling
   In the default Red Hat installation httpd.conf is in /etc/httpd/conf.

   I added the following:

      	SetEnv SYBASE /opt/sybase-12.5
	SetEnv LD_LIBRARY_PATH /opt/sybase-12.5/OCS/lib
	SetEnv CONFIG_FILE /var/www/lib/config.dat

	PerlRequire /var/www/lib/startup.pl

	<Location /bugdb/>
	SetHandler perl-script
	PerlHandler My::BugDB
	</Location>

   which sets a few environment variables, loads the startup.pl file when
   apache starts, and tells apache to call the handler in My::BugDB for 
   any request that hits /bugdb/

   Obviously you'll need to set the paths above appropriately for your
   environment.

5. Next edit config.dat and conpool.cfg to point at the right servers,
   databases, etc, and to have the correct paths for services (perl functions
   describing stored procedures) and html templates.

6. Create the "bugdb" database - see the README in the SQL directory.

7. Restart the web server, and check that it works.

Michael Peppler - mpeppler@peppler.org





