WDB Configuration

To configure WDB to your local environment and preferences you have to edit the wdb.conf file in the conf directory (or wherever you copied it to). But first you have to edit the second line of the wdb script (in /cgi-bin/) : $CONFIG_DIR = '/usr/local/etc/httpd/wdb'; Change the path to point to the directory where you installed the files in the conf/ directory.

The WDB configuration file contains the following configuration parameters :

$formdir

This is the directory where the form definition files are located. This directory doesn't need to be in the WWW document tree, but is should be readable by the userid of the HTTP server. (this applies to all files !)

$user

The database user to use for queries.

$pswd

The password for the database user. (Make sure that the wdb.conf file are not readable by anybody who shouldn't ! )

$server

The database server name.

$MAIN_MENU

This should be set to a URL pointing to the main menu ("homepage") for your WDB pages with links to all the query forms that you create. This will be used for the 'Home' button in the WDB screens. If you don't like this, simply remove the definition of $MAIN_MENU.

$WDB_HTML

Base URL to the directory where you installed the files in html/

$IMAGEDIR

Base URL to the directory where the GIF buttons (html/*_btn.gif) are installed. (Normally = $WDB_HTML)

$QUERY_HELP

This should be the URL for the html/wdb_query_help.html file. (Normally = $WDB_HTML/wdb_query_help.html ).

$rowcount

Maximum number of rows returned by a query. (The user has the option to change this )

$MAXROWCOUNT

Maximum allowed value for $rowcount. (The user can't exceed this)

$DATEFORMAT

This is an optional configuration parameter to set the dateformat. The format used is the same as for the Sybase SQL command 'set dateformat', please refer to you Sybase manual for details. (ex.: $DATEFORMAT = "dmy"; for European date format Day/Month/Year)

$NULL_VALUE

The value to display for NULL fields (Normally = "")

%SPEC_NULL

This is an associative array of field types and special values that are to be interpreted as NULL. For example : %SPEC_NULL = ( 'int', -2147483647, 'smallint', -32768, ); This tells WDB to interpret the value of -2147483647 (the smallest possible value) in an int field as NULL. If you don't need this, simply remove the definition of %SPEC_NULL from the configuration file.

$DBI_FILE

This is the name of the DBI (DataBase Interface) file. This file defines the interface to the database. A file called 'syb_dbi.pl' is supplied with WDB, which is the Sybase interface. This file could be ported to support other database systems like Oracle, Informix, etc.

$debugfile

File to write debug output to when debug is enabled.

$debug

Set this variable to enable extra debug output in the $debugfile and at the end of the HTML output. If you don't want this (probably not!) simply remove the definition of $debug.

$helptext

This is a standard text that are displayed when an error occurs. You might want to change the contact person etc.

sub html_tail

This is a small perl subroutine that print the HTML 'tail' at the end of each HTML page generated by WDB. Please change the default email address of the person to send comments to, and please keep the link to the WDB homepage ( - or add it to one of your other pages, so I get some credit .... :-)

The 'comments' script is included in the WDB distribution in the cgi-bin/ directory. If you want to use this feature please install your own local copy of the script.


Send comments to bfrasmus@eso.org (Bo F.R.) ......... Last update 2-Jan-1995