ICE is Ingres'
proprietary gateway to the Web.
Basically, it is a CGI program that can talk to an
Ingres server through the
native Ingres API.
ICE supports a couple of macro commands which you
can embed in HTML documents.
When rendering such a document, ICE first
executes the macros then outputs the resulting web page.
On other platforms you can configure ICE as
a server extension to the Spyglass web server
which is bundled with Ingres.
The Linux version of Ingres does not include
Spyglass.
Therefore, in this section I will show you how to setup
ICE as a standalone CGI program under
Apache, the world's most popular web server.
You need the ingvalidpw program for
ICE to work.
See subsection ingvalidpw on how to install it.
Building, installing and configuring Apache
is beyond the scope of this HOWTO.
(You had better learn Apache if you are putting
your databases on the Web, with ICE or otherwise.)
I suggest to download the newest stable version of
Apache in source and build it yourself for
maximum flexibility.
I also suggest you keep a separate Apache
installation just for ICE.
In this subsection I will only cover those parameters of
Apache that are important from
ICE's point of view.
Things to watch out for:
The installed software should be owned by the ingres user.
This is not strictly necessary but will make things easier.
Compile the mod_env module into the server, preferably
statically (do not use DSOs unless you have to:
they make Apache slower).
After you have compiled and installed Apache,
set the following parameters in httpd.conf:
Port 8000 -- must be greater than 1023
User ingres -- all server processes run as ingres
Group ingres -- the ingres user's group
PassEnv II_SYSTEM
PassEnv LD_LIBRARY_PATH
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The last two lines must be added to httpd.conf.
These variables will be passed from the environment of the ingres user to the
environment of CGI programs started by
Apache (specifically iceinst
and ice, the two executables of ICE).
Now you can configure ICE and its Tutorials.
You can do this with a browser and the iceinst program.
Let us suppose that your CGI directory is
/opt/ingres/apache/cgi-bin and
Apache is listening on port 8000.
Let the name of your machine be ingserv1.
Then you can start iceinst in the following manner:
$ iceinst -d/opt/ingres/apache/cgi-bin -u/cgi-bin -shttp://ingserv1:8000
-b/opt/netscape/netscape
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Option -d is the full path to the
CGI directory, -u is this directory's
address within the site, -s is the Internet address of the
server, while -b is the full path to the browser.
If you omit option -b and write -remote
instead, then iceinst will not try to start the browser.
You can configure ICE from another machine then,
directing your browser to http://ingserv1/cgi-bin/iceinst.
First the program asks for the value of II_SYSTEM.
Then you should visit every screen and set all parameters presented on them.
Have iceinst install the
Dynamic SQL Tutorial and the
Macro Processor Tutorial as well.
These show the usage of ICE via applications and a database
(icedb by default).
It is important to create a directory under
Apache's
DocumentRoot where ICE can store the output it
creates for clients' requests.
ICE will not start until you create this directory and
specify its name in iceinst.
After you have completed every form, choose the
option.
If you have set everything properly, the configuration of
ICE and the installation of the tutorials take place.
ICE is ready to use.