README for the the NZDL Greenstone Java client

This code is released under the Gnu Public Licence, as described in the 
file GPL or on the web site http://www.gnu.org/


The main authors of this code are:
At the University of Waikato NZDL group http://www.nzdl.org:
   David Bainbridge <davidb@cs.waikato.ac.nz>
   Dave Nichols <dmn@cs.waikato.ac.nz>,
   Brett Sheeran <bsheeran@xtra.co.nz> (bas6 in the cvs log)
   Stuart Yeates <s.yeates@cs.waikato.ac.nz>

Formerly with the NZDL group:
   Aziz Mahoui <amahoui@yahoo.com>
   Gordon W. Paynter <paynter@library.ucr.edu>

Collaborators:
   George Buchanan <g.buchanan@cs.ucl.ac.uk>

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The NZDL Java-Client interface is a package for writing java applications to 
communicate with the Greenstone Digital Library.

The interface is through Common Object Reference Broker Architecture (CORBA).
In order to communicate to Greenstone collections, this software requires that 
the server machine has Corbaserver installed and running.

************

1. Introduction

It is now possible to access Greenstone collections using the Corba 
protocol and a Java client.

**

As a Java programmer it is not necessary to understand Corba at all - 
as the Corba complexity has been reduced to a series of Java objects, 
methods and interfaces.

**

To demonstrate how to use the Nzdl classes we have created an 
application, SimpleGraphicalClient, which can query a Corba server 
and display the resulting documents. This client is probably a 
good starting point to using Java with the NZDL.


2. Getting the code


2.1 Getting the SimpleGraphicalClient application source code

cvs -d :pserver:cvs_anon@cvs.scms.waikato.ac.nz:2402/usr/local/global-cvs/gsdl-src checkout java-client
cd java-client
make

2.2 Getting the Server

cvs :pserver:cvs_anon@cvs.scms.waikato.ac.nz:2402/usr/local/global-cvs/gsdl-src checkout gsdl
cd gsdl
./configure --enable-corba
make
make install

(anything else??)

3. Running the client

It is important to get the directories correct - as Java 
uses them to manage the namespace of the classes. So you 
should have something that looks like:

java-client/org/nzdl/gsdl/

In this directory you will find:

corba - directory, lots of nasty corba stuff, avoid
service - the java classes you use, no need to look at this
SimpleClient.java - early test application
SimpleGraphicalClient - directory, the Java package

Run:
java org.nzdl.gsdl.SimpleGraphicalClient.SimpleGraphicalClient


4. Running the server

corbaserver -ORBNoCodeSets