Am 16.09.2011 um 23:45 schrieb C. M. Sperberg-McQueen:

I'm a little by confused by the documentation at

http://docs.basex.org/wiki/Startup

I think I'm confused in two ways.

First, I seem to be unclear on the similarities and differences among the
various top-level programs that seem to be runnable. (I've never run
anything but the GUI, or felt the need to do so until now, but I'm trying to
figure out how to use the BaseX server in a Web application.)

Is there any guide to how these things differ from each other?

We do have the classes:

BaseX

which resembles the command-line standalone client, similar to

BaseXClient

which resembles the command-line client connecting to a server

BaseXGui

which runs the standalone instance with the GUI

BaseXServer

which runs the server

Regarding your wish to embed BaseX inside a web application you might perhaps be interested in the HTTP Extensions [1] introduced with the next release.

We also have clients written in numerous languages, but I guess you have already found those at [2].

Second, the document says there are several different ways to start the
BaseX server:

• Double click on the BaseX Server (Start) icon. This will also start the JAX-RX server.
• Run one of the basexserver/basexserver.bat scripts
• Execute the command java -cp BaseX.jar org.basex.BaseXServer

I'm confused because

- I don't see any icon labeled "BaseX Server (Start)".

This is only valid for windows systems, where BaseX has been installed via our installer (s/o correct me if I am wrong), sorry for the inconsistencies introduced here.

- Neither Spotlight (the Mac OS X file-system search) nor
'find' is able to locate any directory named 'basexserver'
in or near the place where I installed BaseX.

Running the 'java' command from the command line does seem to work
(at least, it produces the message "Server was started").

This looks fine.

Is the BaseX Server (Start) icon provided for some but not all
operating systems / in some but not all downloads? Or did I
screw up the installation and not do it right?

No you did nothing wrong, and I admit: the documentation (or packaging :-)) is a little sloppy on our side here.

The document

http://docs.basex.org/wiki/Start_Scripts

seems to suggest that the scripts are expected to be part of a
Mac OS X installation as well as a Linux and Windows installation.

[…]

Perhaps the download packages have been prepared on the
assumption that those who want to run the server separately from
the GUI will download the platform-independent package?

This is exactly how it is, you have two options:

First, you may put the contents of [3] to /usr/bin/basexserver and

$ chmod a+rx /usr/bin/basexserver

The main problem regarding the DMG is that we don't have an installer (yet?), thus the startup scripts are not copied automatically to /usr/bin

Second you may download the ZIP distribution which comes bundled with all necessary startup scripts but lacks the convenient BaseX.app

I'll be grateful for any light anyone can shed on this.

Thanks!

I hope this helped, if not feel free to ask for more information.

I'm halfway off to my belated summer vacation, so maybe a team member will have to help you out with further information :-)

P.S. based on your observations we will provide the startup scripts for OSX with the next release, so users may at least manually copy those to /usr/bin

P.P.S. I already thought of using a cross platform installer like izPack, install4j or maybe even bitrock, I guess this would ease some of the pain :-)