OpenACS Handbook

I OpenACS For Everyone
- I.1 High level information: What is OpenACS?
  - I.1.1 Overview
  - I.1.2 OpenACS Release Notes
- I.2 OpenACS: robust web development framework
  - I.2.1 Introduction
  - I.2.2 Basic infrastructure
  - I.2.3 Advanced infrastructure
  - I.2.4 Domain level tools
II Administrator's Guide
- II.2 Installation Overview
  - II.2.1 Basic Steps
  - II.2.2 Prerequisite Software
- II.3 Complete Installation
  - II.3.1 Install a Unix-like system and supporting software
  - II.3.2 Install Oracle 10g XE on debian
    - II.3.2.1 Install Oracle 8.1.7
  - II.3.3 Install PostgreSQL
  - II.3.4 Install AOLserver 4
  - II.3.5 Quick Install of OpenACS
    - II.3.5.1 Complex Install OpenACS 5.3
  - II.3.6 OpenACS Installation Guide for Windows2000
  - II.3.7 OpenACS Installation Guide for Mac OS X
- II.4 Configuring a new OpenACS Site
  - II.4.1 Installing OpenACS packages
  - II.4.2 Mounting OpenACS packages
  - II.4.3 Configuring an OpenACS package
  - II.4.4 Setting Permissions on an OpenACS package
  - II.4.5 How Do I?
  - II.4.6 Configure OpenACS look and feel with templates
- II.5 Upgrading
  - II.5.1 Overview
  - II.5.2 Upgrading 4.5 or higher to 4.6.3
  - II.5.3 Upgrading OpenACS 4.6.3 to 5.0
  - II.5.4 Upgrading an OpenACS 5.0.0 or greater installation
  - II.5.5 Upgrading the OpenACS files
  - II.5.6 Upgrading Platform components
- II.6 Production Environments
  - II.6.1 Starting and Stopping an OpenACS instance.
  - II.6.2 AOLserver keepalive with inittab
  - II.6.3 Running multiple services on one machine
  - II.6.4 High Availability/High Performance Configurations
  - II.6.5 Staged Deployment for Production Networks
  - II.6.6 Installing SSL Support for an OpenACS service
  - II.6.7 Set up Log Analysis Reports
  - II.6.8 External uptime validation
  - II.6.9 Diagnosing Performance Problems
- II.7 Database Management
  - II.7.1 Running a PostgreSQL database on another server
  - II.7.2 Deleting a tablespace
  - II.7.3 Vacuum Postgres nightly
- II.8 Backup and Recovery
  - II.8.1 Backup Strategy
  - II.8.2 Manual backup and recovery
  - II.8.3 Automated Backup
  - II.8.4 Using CVS for backup-recovery
- II.A Install Red Hat 8/9
- II.B Install additional supporting software
  - II.B.1 Unpack the OpenACS tarball
  - II.B.2 Initialize CVS (OPTIONAL)
  - II.B.3 Add PSGML commands to emacs init file (OPTIONAL)
  - II.B.4 Install Daemontools (OPTIONAL)
  - II.B.5 Install qmail (OPTIONAL)
  - II.B.6 Install Analog web file analyzer
  - II.B.7 Install nspam
  - II.B.8 Install Full Text Search
  - II.B.9 Install Full Text Search using Tsearch2
  - II.B.10 Install Full Text Search using OpenFTS (deprecated see tsearch2)
  - II.B.11 Install nsopenssl
  - II.B.12 Install tclwebtest.
  - II.B.13 Install PHP for use in AOLserver
  - II.B.14 Install Squirrelmail for use as a webmail system for OpenACS
  - II.B.15 Install PAM Radius for use as external authentication
  - II.B.16 Install LDAP for use as external authentication
  - II.B.17 Install AOLserver 3.3oacs1
- II.C Credits
  - II.C.1 Where did this document come from?
  - II.C.2 Linux Install Guides
  - II.C.3 Security Information
  - II.C.4 Resources
III For OpenACS Package Developers
- III.9 Development Tutorial
  - III.9.1 Creating an Application Package
  - III.9.2 Setting Up Database Objects
  - III.9.3 Creating Web Pages
  - III.9.4 Debugging and Automated Testing
- III.10 Advanced Topics
  - III.10.1 Write the Requirements and Design Specs
  - III.10.2 Add the new package to CVS
  - III.10.3 OpenACS Edit This Page Templates
  - III.10.4 Adding Comments
  - III.10.5 Admin Pages
  - III.10.6 Categories
  - III.10.7 Profile your code
  - III.10.8 Prepare the package for distribution.
  - III.10.9 Distributing upgrades of your package
  - III.10.10 Notifications
  - III.10.11 Hierarchical data
  - III.10.12 Using .vuh files for pretty urls
  - III.10.13 Laying out a page with CSS instead of tables
  - III.10.14 Sending HTML email from your application
  - III.10.15 Basic Caching
  - III.10.16 Scheduled Procedures
  - III.10.17 Enabling WYSIWYG
  - III.10.18 Adding in parameters for your package
  - III.10.19 Writing upgrade scripts
  - III.10.20 Connect to a second database
  - III.10.21 Future Topics
- III.11 Development Reference
  - III.11.1 OpenACS Packages
  - III.11.2 OpenACS Data Models and the Object System
  - III.11.3 The Request Processor
  - III.11.4 The OpenACS Database Access API
  - III.11.5 Using Templates in OpenACS
  - III.11.6 Groups, Context, Permissions
  - III.11.7 Writing OpenACS Application Pages
  - III.11.8 Parties in OpenACS
  - III.11.9 OpenACS Permissions Tediously Explained
  - III.11.10 Object Identity
  - III.11.11 Programming with AOLserver
  - III.11.12 Using Form Builder: building html forms dynamically
- III.12 Engineering Standards
  - III.12.1 OpenACS Style Guide
  - III.12.2 Release Version Numbering
  - III.12.3 Constraint naming standard
  - III.12.4 ACS File Naming and Formatting Standards
  - III.12.5 PL/SQL Standards
  - III.12.6 Variables
  - III.12.7 Automated Testing
- III.13 CVS Guidelines
  - III.13.1 Using CVS with OpenACS
  - III.13.2 OpenACS CVS Concepts
  - III.13.3 Contributing code back to OpenACS
  - III.13.4 Additional Resources for CVS
- III.14 Documentation Standards
  - III.14.1 OpenACS Documentation Guide
  - III.14.2 Using PSGML mode in Emacs
  - III.14.3 Using nXML mode in Emacs
  - III.14.4 Detailed Design Documentation Template
  - III.14.5 System/Application Requirements Template
- III.15 TCLWebtest
  - III.15.1 API test
  - III.15.2 Webtest
- III.16 Internationalization
  - III.16.1 Internationalization and Localization Overview
  - III.16.2 How Internationalization/Localization works in OpenACS
  - III.16.4 Design Notes
  - III.16.5 Translator's Guide
- III.D Using CVS with an OpenACS Site
IV For OpenACS Platform Developers
- IV.17 Kernel Documentation
  - IV.17.1 Overview
  - IV.17.2 Object Model Requirements
  - IV.17.3 Object Model Design
  - IV.17.4 Permissions Requirements
  - IV.17.5 Permissions Design
  - IV.17.6 Groups Requirements
  - IV.17.7 Groups Design
  - IV.17.8 Subsites Requirements
  - IV.17.9 Subsites Design Document
  - IV.17.10 Package Manager Requirements
  - IV.17.11 Package Manager Design
  - IV.17.12 Database Access API
  - IV.17.13 OpenACS Internationalization Requirements
  - IV.17.14 Security Requirements
  - IV.17.15 Security Design
  - IV.17.16 Security Notes
  - IV.17.17 Request Processor Requirements
  - IV.17.18 Request Processor Design
  - IV.17.19 Documenting Tcl Files: Page Contracts and Libraries
  - IV.17.20 Bootstrapping OpenACS
  - IV.17.21 External Authentication Requirements
- IV.18 Releasing OpenACS
  - IV.18.1 OpenACS Core and .LRN
  - IV.18.2 How to Update the OpenACS.org repository
  - IV.18.3 How to package and release an OpenACS Package
  - IV.18.4 How to Update the translations
V Tcl for Web Nerds
- V.1 Tcl for Web Nerds Introduction
- V.2 Basic String Operations
- V.3 List Operations
- V.4 Pattern matching
- V.5 Array Operations
- V.6 Numbers
- V.7 Control Structure
- V.8 Scope, Upvar and Uplevel
- V.9 File Operations
- V.10 Eval
- V.11 Exec
- V.12 Tcl for Web Use
- V.13 OpenACS conventions for TCL
- V.14 Solutions
VI SQL for Web Nerds
- VI.1 SQL Tutorial
  - VI.1.1 SQL Tutorial
  - VI.1.2 Answers
- VI.2 SQL for Web Nerds Introduction
- VI.3 Data modeling
  - VI.3.1 The Discussion Forum -- philg's personal odyssey
  - VI.3.2 Data Types (Oracle)
  - VI.3.4 Tables
  - VI.3.5 Constraints
- VI.4 Simple queries
- VI.5 More complex queries
- VI.6 Transactions
- VI.7 Triggers
- VI.8 Views
- VI.9 Style
- VI.10 Escaping to the procedural world
- VI.11 Trees

II.6.8 External uptime validation

The OpenACS uptime site can monitor your site and send you an email whenever your site fails to respond. If you test the url http://yourserver.test/SYSTEM/dbtest.tcl, you should get back the string success.