To install Consultant Communicator:

You can install ConsultComm in a plethera of ways. That's right. A plethera. Here are the different installation packages I release:

  • InstallAnywhere Builds (i.e. CsltComm.exe or CsltComm.bin)
  • Binary Packages (i.e. CsltComm.zip)
  • Source Packages (i.e. CsltComm.src.tar.gz)
    Also read the sidenote on JDBC Connections if you're interested.

  • If you use the InstallAnywhere installers
    1. If you use the InstallAnywhere packages, you just need to be sure that you have Sun's Java JRE 1.3 or higher installed. To see if the JRE has been installed or not, simply type:
       > java -version
      at the command line. If a "program not found" error occurs, install the Java Runtime Environment, available from http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/jre/

    2. If you are not using Java 2 1.4 or higher you must download the Java API for XML processing. Visit http://java.sun.com/xml/download.html to download the package, then place the included JAR files (jaxp.jar, xalan.jar and crimson.jar) into your Java Extensions directory (see Important Directories You Might Need to Know for the location of your extensions directory).

    3. Just double-click on the InstallAnywhere file you downloaded. The installer should walk you through the rest.

  • If you have the binary package (the file CsltComm.zip)
    1. Make sure that you have Sun's Java JRE 1.3 or higher installed. To see if the JRE has been installed or not, simply type:
       > java -version
      at the command line. If a "program not found" error occurs, install the Java Runtime Environment, available from http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/jre/

    2. If you are not using Java 2 1.4 or higher you must download the Java API for XML processing. Visit http://java.sun.com/xml/download.html to download the package, then place the included JAR files (jaxp.jar, xalan.jar and crimson.jar) into your Java Extensions directory (see Important Directories You Might Need to Know for the location of your extensions directory).

    3. Unzip the contents of CsltComm.zip into a new folder (if you don't have a utility to unzip files, check out http://www.winzip.com)

    4. Double-click on the file CsltComm.jar that you just extracted.

  • If you want to build a version from the source pacakge (CsltComm.src.tar.gz)
    1. Make sure you have Sun's Java SDK 1.3 or higher installed (go to http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/ if you need a copy)

    2. If you are NOT using Java 2 1.4 or higher you must download the Java API for XML processing. Visit http://java.sun.com/xml/download.html to download the package, then place the included JAR files (jaxp.jar, xalan.jar and crimson.jar) into your Java Extensions directory (see Important Directories You Might Need to Know for the location of your extensions directory).

    3. You also need Jakarta Ant to run the build scripts. You can download it from http://jakarta.apache.org/builds/jakarta-ant/release/v1.5/bin/

    4. Unzip the contents of CsltComm.src.tar.gz into a new folder

    5. Change into the folder you extracted the files to

    6. Run the command ant. If you want to enable X Windows extensions, use ant X. For Win32 extensions, use ant Win32

    7. Run the command ant dist.

    8. Double-click on the file CsltComm.jar that should have been built by step 4

  • JDBC Connections

    If you want to use JDBC connectivity, you'll need to have a .jar or .zip file that contains your JDBC database driver. I can't provide that... but Sun offers a list at http://industry.java.sun.com/products/jdbc/drivers . You can also use the JDBC-ODBC Bridge Driver that Sun releases with the Java SDK - details concerning the Sun bridge driver are available at http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.3/docs/guide/jdbc/getstart/bridge.doc.html.
    Once you have the correct JAR or ZIP files, place them in the Java Runtime Environment's extensions directory (see Important Directories You Might Need to Know for the location of your extensions directory). If the driver files are in the correct ext/ directory, ConsultComm should be able to notice them automatically.
    For more information, read over the Connecting ConsultComm to a Database document.