ZimWeb Administration

ZimWeb has an administration tool - the ZIIAdmin servlet - which can be used to administer ZimWeb, either from the web or from a command line or script, which can be scheduled.

Web administration

If you invoke the ZIIAdmin servlet from a web browser then you will see a page with various parts under different headings:-

Database Status

Allows you to monitor, start and stop the Zim agent sessions e.g. if you want to prevent access to the Zim application for maintenance purposes.
The current status of the Zim agent sessions is indicated as "Database connections are RUNNING" or "... NOT RUNNING".
If the connections are running, then an adjacent button allows you to "Shutdown Database Connections"; if they are not running, then the button allows you to "Start Database Connections".

Debug Status

Indicates whether client debugging capability is enabled or disabled - press the adjacent button to toggle the status as necessary.

Initialisation Parameters

Shows the values of the startup parameters for the ZimWeb.

XSLT Stylesheet cache

Indicates the current contents of the XSLT stylesheet cache.
If you need to clear the cache - e.g. if you have changed an XSLT stylesheet which is cached into memory and thus will not be read - then click the adjacent button "Clear XSLT Stylesheet Cache".

Page Template cache

Indicates the current contents of the page template cache.
If you need to clear the cache - e.g. if you have changed a page template which is cached into memory and thus will not be read - then click the adjacent button "Clear Page Template Cache".

FOP driver pool

Indicates the current number of FOP (Apache Formatting Object Processor) driver instances and the number checked out (in active use at the time that you start the web-administration tool).
If the ZII receives more than one request for XSL-FO rendering at the same time then it will automatically increase the number of driver instances available.
If you need to reset the FOP driver pool then click the adjacent button "Reset FOP Driver Pool".

Command line or scripted administration

The ZIIAdmin servlet can also be invoked from the command line or by a script. The servlet itself requires two parameters:-

action - set to indicate what query or action the servlet is to perform. Permitted actions include:-
- conn-status - return the status of the Zim database agent connections.
- conn-start - attempt to start the Zim database agent connections.
- conn-stop - attempt to stop the Zim database agent connections.
- debug-status - return the debug capability status.
- debug-enable - enable the debug capability.
- debug-disable - disable the debug capability.
- clear-style-cache - clear the XSLT stylesheet cache.
- clear-page-template-cache - clear the page template cache.
- reset-xslfo-driver-pool - reset the XSL/FO driver pool.
content - set to text so that the servlet will return plain text instead of HTML.

CallURL utility

To enable the servlet to be called from the command line or a script, ZimWeb includes the CallURL utility to enable calls to a URL, with BASIC authentication details if necessary.

The full syntax for CallURL is:

java -cp <path>/zii.jar biz.zim.util.CallURL <URL> [ <username> <password> ]
... to invoke the URL <URL>, optionally with BASIC authentication for user <username> and password <password>.

(e.g. To start the database connections on a local running ZimWeb installation or a default Tomcat installation, if the ZimWeb file zii.jar is in the current directory, and the ZimWeb administration servlet has security requiring the username admin and password friend, you could use the command:-java -cp zii.jar http://localhost:8080/ZII/servlet/ZIIAdmin?action=conn-start&content=text admin friend)