17
Oracle Calendar Application System

This chapter provides an overview of the Oracle Calendar application system, including a summary of its components, architecture information and installation considerations.

About the Oracle Calendar Application System

Oracle Calendar includes several components, or plug-ins, that are managed in an application server framework called the Oracle Calendar application system (OCAS). OCAS provides a set of shared proprietary APIs that interface with the Oracle Calendar server and run alongside the Oracle HTTP Server (OHS), as shown in the following illustration.

Text description of the illustration architea.gif

Oracle Calendar's features are provided by loading each of the components on startup. Each component populates the system registry with functionalities such as HTTP request handlers, data sync handlers and data access service providers.

Working With OCAS Components

This section includes descriptions and configuration information for the components of OCAS.

About OCAS Components

Oracle Calendar web client Allows users to share agendas, schedule meetings and book resources and equipment through a wide variety of on-line and off-line access options, including Web, Microsoft Outlook through the Oracle Outlook Connector, native clients for Windows, Macintosh and Linux systems, and integration with wireless and synchronization applications.

The Oracle Calendar Web client back-end is easy to maintain and features a variety of automated maintenance tasks.

Oracle Sync Server Offers direct two-way synchronization with Oracle Calendar Server over any standard Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) connection, opening up the calendar infrastructure to any SyncML-compliant device or application with Internet access. The Oracle Sync Server architecture can also be extended to support third-party standards-based or proprietary infrastructures.

Oracle Sync Server provides a flexible way to create common information formats and share both the format and the data on the World Wide Web, intranets, and elsewhere.

Oracle Calendar web services Allows applications to retrieve, through common XML queries, calendaring data for display in any portal, client application, or backend server. iCal data is coded in XML, wherein iCal becomes xCal. SOAP is used to encapsulate the messages for delivery. The calendaring data Web Services SOAP is stored directly on the Calendar Server store. This is in effect the CWSL, or Calendar Web Services Language.

Developers can use the Oracle Calendar web services toolkit, included with Oracle Calendar, to build web services applications and create SOAP 1.1 queries. The toolkit contains functionality to search, create, modify, and delete calendar events, as well as search tasks.

Customizing OCAS Components

The configuration files of OCAS and its components are:

• ocas.conf: OCAS itself
• ocwc.conf: Oracle Calendar web client
• ocws.conf: Oracle Calendar web services
• ocst.conf: Oracle Sync Server
• ocal.conf: Apache directives, included from
  $ORACLE_HOME/Apache/Apache/conf/oracle_apache.conf

  Note: Ocal.conf, is used to control OCAS instances and fastcgi connections, as described in the section"General Configuration," later in this chapter. Ocal.conf parameters are documented in the Oracle HTTP Server Administration Guide.

The configuration files are located in the conf subdirectory of $ORACLE_HOME/ocas/. For information on editing their contents, see the Oracle Calendar Reference Guide. It is strongly recommended that for reference purposes you make a copy, in either printed or electronic format, of these files before you modify them.

Installation Considerations

Consider the following factors when installing Oracle Calendar:

• Because OCAS uses a shared memory mechanism, an OCAS installation must be run under one specific user on a host. A single user cannot have two independent OCAS installs, as they will share the same memory. However, having multiple users on a single machine is supported, since each user's shared memory is insulated from the other users.
• For security reasons, it is best that Oracle Sync Server only be accessible through SSL (HTTPS) connections. You may also want to install Oracle Sync Server on a separate host for easier accessibility from phones. Keep in mind that GSM phones can have VPN access inside a firewall, while GPRS phones cannot.
• Standalone installations of Oracle Calendar require Apache 1.3.27 with mod-fastcgi 2.2.12. You will need to find the latter through FTP access, as it is not readily available from the Apache Web site. Standalone does not work with Apache 2.x and mod-fastcgi 2.4.x.

Post-Installation Issues

Generally, the default settings of the Oracle Calendar application system allow you to get the system working immediately after installation. However, there are some configuration options you should consider, depending on your environment.

General Configuration

• Run several instances of ocas.fcgi (the number of instances depends on setup and load). You can configure this in ocal.conf.
• You must run one i ns t ance of ochecklet.fcgi per installation or host. This is also configured in ocal.conf.
• In order to use the Sync Server, set your KeepAlive parameter in httpd.conf or apache.conf to 300 seconds, or turn it off. This is done to correspond to the idle-timeout value of 300 seconds in ocal.conf.
• Make sure that the linkdb and sessiondb variables in all hosts' ocas files refer to the same path; for example, the same NFS mount.
• Set Authentication, Compression and Encryption (ACE) values in each component's conf file. AUTH Web settings for all products should be configured in the [ACE_PLUGINS_CLIENT] section of ocas.conf.
• Make sure you restart Oracle HTTP Server or Apache after any changes to the conf files.
• If you experience any problems, check for error messages in:

  $ORACLE_HOME/ocas/logs/ocas_log
  
  

• To see if the client and its components are running, open the system page at http://server:port/ocas-bin/ocas.fcgi?sub=sys. If a component is not running, it will not appear in the system page.
• To connect to a component with an appropriate client, use the following URLs:
  • Sync Server http://<host>:<port>/ocst-bin/ocas.fcgi
  • Web Services http://<host>:<port>/ocws-bin/ocas.fcgi
  • Calendar Web client http://<host>:<port>/ocas-bin/ocas.fcgi?sub=web

Configuring Your Web Server

If you are using the Oracle HTTP Server (OHS) in a Collaboration Suite installation of Oracle Calendar, OHS is automatically configured to recognize the Calendar application system and the Calendar Administrator tool.

However, if you are running a standalone installation of Oracle Calendar using Apache or OHS, add the following to the Web server's httpd.conf file in order to recognize the Oracle Calendar Administrator:

include $ORACLE_HOME/ocal/config/ocad.conf

(Make sure there is read access to ocad.conf.)

In addition, make the following changes to your httpd.conf file so that you can use the Oracle Calendar application system:

• Include $ORACLE_HOME/ocas/conf/ocal.conf
• Set the system library search path to include $ORACLE_HOME/lib
• Set the ORACLE_HOME environment variable to the directory where Oracle Calendar is installed

Keep in mind that you may have to resolve conflicting settings if you customized your original in a similar manner.

Restart the Web server after you make the changes.