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This section walks you through the installation process. Before creating or running reports, you need to perform a few one-time operations:
For each database you add after installing and configuring DataVision, you will have to perform the last two steps again.
Aside from JDBC database drivers, DataVision requires Java version 1.4 or higher to run. The instructions for installing Java are beyond the scope of this document. For more information, see Sun's Java site.
Extract the distribution from the archive file named datavision-version.tar.gz (where version is a version number like "1.2.0"). When you do, a directory named datavision-version is created. You may create or move this directory anywhere you wish.
To extract the DataVision distribution from the command line, type tar -xzf datavision-version.tar.gz.
To extract the DataVision distribution from a GUI-based program such as WinZip, open the file datavision-version.tar.gz by clicking or double-clicking the file or from within the running application. What happens next will depend upon your operating system and supporting applications. The directory may be extracted automatically for you; you may be asked where to put it first. Alternately, the DataVision archive may be opened and you may need to extract all the files yourself.
DataVision depends upon JDBC drivers to communicate with databases. You must have the correct driver for each type of database (Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL, hsqldb, ODBC, etc.) that you wish to use.
Many drivers may be found by looking on the database developer's Web site. Here is a list of useful URLs.
See Connecting to the Database for more information about particular drivers, including some issues that users have found.
A class path is a list of directories or jar files that Java searches to find all the files it needs. (The class path does not need to know about your data files. It tells the Java run time where to find the class files, images, and properties files DataVision needs to run.) Though there is a built-in class path that Java already knows about, that class path does not include the whereabouts of your JDBC drivers or DataVision itself.
The files datavision.sh (Unix) and
datavision.bat (Windows) set the class path before
running DataVision. You may need to edit the appropriate one and add
the path to your JDBC database drivers. These files already set the
classpath used by DataVision to include all .jar files in the
./lib directory under the DataVision directory, so if all
your JDBC drivers are there, you do not need to edit the DataVision
classpath at all.
If necessary, open the file datavision.bat with a text editor such as Notepad. We are going to edit the line that looks like
set DVCLASSPATH=
Add a semicolon (;) and then the full path to each of your JDBC driver
files not in your .\lib directory to this line,
separating each with a semicolon. For example, if you have installed
the JDBC driver jar file jdbc.jar in the folder
c:\foo, your line will look like
set DVCLASSPATH=;c:\foo\jdbc.jar"
If necessary, open the file datavision.sh with your favorite text editor. We are going to edit the line that looks like
dvclasspath=""
Append a colon (:) and the full path to each of your JDBC driver files
not in ./lib to this line, separating each with a
colon. For example, if you have installed the JDBC driver jar file
jdbc.jar in the folder $HOME/foo, your line
will look like
classpath=:$HOME/foo/jdbc.jar
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