Essential Viewer Not Appearing
I've installed a multi-user configuration. I installed Essential Viewer's all 4 components as per the documentation on the server. I installed only widgets on my client. When I access my repository, I do not have a viewer tab. I looked under configuration and do not see an option available for a viewer tab. I did login to the server via the client, chose other, and am certainly on the server so that is not the problem. Please help.
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jonathan.carter
- Posts: 1087
- Joined: 04 Feb 2009, 15:44
Just to be clear, Essential Viewer is a web application that is deployed to your Tomcat installation. This is accessed by a web browser, typically with a URL like (in a stand-alone installation):
It is this tab that takes a snapshot of your repository and sends it to the Essential Viewer web application.
With your multi-user installation, you will need to update the Report Service URL on this Essential Architecture Reporting tab to point to the server in your multi-user setup, e.g.
Hope this helps.
Jonathan
or for a multi-user install:
You should have a tab called "Essential Architecture Reporting" enabled in Protege, assuming you have opened a Protege project that is either an Essential sample repository or your own repository based on the Essential baseline repository that is included in the install.http://<your server>:8080/essential_viewer
It is this tab that takes a snapshot of your repository and sends it to the Essential Viewer web application.
With your multi-user installation, you will need to update the Report Service URL on this Essential Architecture Reporting tab to point to the server in your multi-user setup, e.g.
Then, when you hit the "Publish Repository" button, the tab will generate the snapshot and send it to the reporting service on your server. When that has completed successfully (it might take a few seconds to do this), the views of your repository will be available in the Essential Viewer web application.http://<your server>:8080/essential_viewer/reportService
Hope this helps.
Jonathan
Essential Project Team
Jason, I do not see the tab called "Essential Architecture Reporting". I see this warning in the server log:
WARNING: Missing project at /Essential/Repository/annotation_essential_baseline_v1.1.pprj -- Server.getAvailableProjectNames()
Server: Adding Session(id=1, user=hattana) on Mon Apr 26 11:43:08 EDT 2010
Server: Opened project Essential AM Respository for Session(id=1, user=hattana) on Mon Apr 26 11:43:08 EDT 2010
WARNING: Failed to open project: Session(id=2, user=hattana) tried to open project Essential AM Annotations, but operation failed.Possible causes: project with this name is not defined in the metaproject;project is not in the ready status, or project could not be opened by the server(check previous server logs) -- Server.openProject()
Server: Removing Session(id=1, user=hattana) on Mon Apr 26 11:44:55 EDT 2010.
I also can't get to the essential viewer through an URL. I am using the direct path.
I do see these files, essentialinstall.zip
essential_viewer.war. Am I supposed to install this? I I thought the installer did the install.
I followed the install instructions. Help!!!! TIA.
WARNING: Missing project at /Essential/Repository/annotation_essential_baseline_v1.1.pprj -- Server.getAvailableProjectNames()
Server: Adding Session(id=1, user=hattana) on Mon Apr 26 11:43:08 EDT 2010
Server: Opened project Essential AM Respository for Session(id=1, user=hattana) on Mon Apr 26 11:43:08 EDT 2010
WARNING: Failed to open project: Session(id=2, user=hattana) tried to open project Essential AM Annotations, but operation failed.Possible causes: project with this name is not defined in the metaproject;project is not in the ready status, or project could not be opened by the server(check previous server logs) -- Server.openProject()
Server: Removing Session(id=1, user=hattana) on Mon Apr 26 11:44:55 EDT 2010.
I also can't get to the essential viewer through an URL. I am using the direct path.
I do see these files, essentialinstall.zip
essential_viewer.war. Am I supposed to install this? I I thought the installer did the install.
I followed the install instructions. Help!!!! TIA.
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jonathan.carter
- Posts: 1087
- Joined: 04 Feb 2009, 15:44
As long as the Protege server is happy to continue to run, you should be OK with that error message.
It looks to me like trouble with the installer.
When you download it, you should get a file called essentialinstall.jar (NOTE: not essentialinstall.zip). Once you've made sure that you have Java installed, you should run the 'essentialinstall.jar' file, which will take you through the installation process.
We have seen some problems downloading the 'essentialinstall.jar' file with Microsoft Internet Explorer, which insists on changing the file suffix to '.zip'. This is an issue with IE and downloading JAR files that is very tricky to consistently work around from the webserver end. However, all you need to do is make sure that this file is downloaded and saved as 'essentialinstall.jar'. I think you can do this when IE asks where you would like to save it but otherwise, you can simply rename it before you attempt to run it.
I'd like to get this possibly scenario out of the way, first - that the installer has not run correctly.
From what you've described, it sounds like you've received the installer as a '.zip' and when you double-clicked on it, Windows has unpacked the ZIP to give you the WAR file and the baseline repository Protege project that is in the, 'essential_metamodel.zip' file.
Apologies if you've already run the installer, been through the install wizard and all that. When it runs successfully, the installer will deploy that 'essential_viewer.war' file that you have to your Apache Tomcat (or other favourite Java Web Application Server) webapps folder. Also, the missing tab etc. will be deployed to your Protege plugins folder.
The other thing to note is that you must perform the install on the server that will host the repository and Essential Viewer. Additionally, the client components (Protege, Essential Widgets) must be installed on each workstation that you or your team will use to populate and update the repository. Users browsing Essential Viewer only require a web browser.
If you haven't already seen the installer running (as per Section 5 of the multi-user install guide), re-name that 'essentialinstall.zip' to 'essentialinstall.jar' and double click on that.
Finally, assuming that the install has completed successfully, that error that you're seeing is related to the change-tracking set up. See Section 12 of the multi-user install guide and in particular the article on the Enabling Collaboration for what's involved in setting up the change tracking and collaborative capabilities of Protege.
Let me know about how the install actually went and that you were taken through the install wizard.
Jonathan
It looks to me like trouble with the installer.
When you download it, you should get a file called essentialinstall.jar (NOTE: not essentialinstall.zip). Once you've made sure that you have Java installed, you should run the 'essentialinstall.jar' file, which will take you through the installation process.
We have seen some problems downloading the 'essentialinstall.jar' file with Microsoft Internet Explorer, which insists on changing the file suffix to '.zip'. This is an issue with IE and downloading JAR files that is very tricky to consistently work around from the webserver end. However, all you need to do is make sure that this file is downloaded and saved as 'essentialinstall.jar'. I think you can do this when IE asks where you would like to save it but otherwise, you can simply rename it before you attempt to run it.
I'd like to get this possibly scenario out of the way, first - that the installer has not run correctly.
From what you've described, it sounds like you've received the installer as a '.zip' and when you double-clicked on it, Windows has unpacked the ZIP to give you the WAR file and the baseline repository Protege project that is in the, 'essential_metamodel.zip' file.
Apologies if you've already run the installer, been through the install wizard and all that. When it runs successfully, the installer will deploy that 'essential_viewer.war' file that you have to your Apache Tomcat (or other favourite Java Web Application Server) webapps folder. Also, the missing tab etc. will be deployed to your Protege plugins folder.
The other thing to note is that you must perform the install on the server that will host the repository and Essential Viewer. Additionally, the client components (Protege, Essential Widgets) must be installed on each workstation that you or your team will use to populate and update the repository. Users browsing Essential Viewer only require a web browser.
If you haven't already seen the installer running (as per Section 5 of the multi-user install guide), re-name that 'essentialinstall.zip' to 'essentialinstall.jar' and double click on that.
Finally, assuming that the install has completed successfully, that error that you're seeing is related to the change-tracking set up. See Section 12 of the multi-user install guide and in particular the article on the Enabling Collaboration for what's involved in setting up the change tracking and collaborative capabilities of Protege.
Let me know about how the install actually went and that you were taken through the install wizard.
Jonathan
Essential Project Team
Jonathan, I might've confused you with listing the .war file. Yes, I went through the installer successfully (essential install.jar) on the server. I guess that .war file should be in the Tomcat directory. I thought it may need to be imploded.
I cannot get to the essential viewer via a url as you described in an earlier response. I am able to get to the server if I point to something like http://eams.lirr.org:8080/jsp-examples/ (eams is the name of our server) so I am able to get to the server.
What am I doing wrong? I've attached a screen shot of the project when I first open it. TIA for your help.
I cannot get to the essential viewer via a url as you described in an earlier response. I am able to get to the server if I point to something like http://eams.lirr.org:8080/jsp-examples/ (eams is the name of our server) so I am able to get to the server.
What am I doing wrong? I've attached a screen shot of the project when I first open it. TIA for your help.
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jonathan.carter
- Posts: 1087
- Joined: 04 Feb 2009, 15:44
Thanks for the update - that makes things a bit clearer.
When you installed the Essential Viewer, did the installer find your Tomcat installation, or did you have to navigate to it? It will look in typical locations for the Tomcat install. You can check whether it has been deployed by looking in <Tomcat Install>\webapps on your server. You should see a folder in there called 'essential_viewer'. If not, this is why the http://eams.lirr.org:8080/essential_viewer URL is not working.
From the screenshot, it looks like the Essential Widgets have not been installed correctly. Is this a screenshot of Protege running on your server or on a remote client workstation? If it is the workstation, you must also run the installer on each client workstation. However, you can choose just to install the Essential Widgets component (you don't need to install Essential Viewer and the sample repository on each workstation).
Again, the installer looks for your Protege installation and will not let you proceed to the install until it has found a valid Protege installation. You can check whether the installation of the Essential Widgets completed successfully by going to your Protege installation (on each machine that you need to view and update the repository on, i.e. both server and client workstations) and navigating to:
<Protege Install>\plugins and look for a folder called:
If that folder is not there, then the widgets have not been installed correctly.
From the screenshot, it looks like you've got the server setup correctly and serving the Essential Repository. Just looks like the widgets (which will give you the Essential Architecture Reporting Tab and some other helper widgets) and Essential Viewer have not gone in as expected.
Let me know about where the essential_viewer.war and Essential Widgets ended up!
Thanks
Jonathan
When you installed the Essential Viewer, did the installer find your Tomcat installation, or did you have to navigate to it? It will look in typical locations for the Tomcat install. You can check whether it has been deployed by looking in <Tomcat Install>\webapps on your server. You should see a folder in there called 'essential_viewer'. If not, this is why the http://eams.lirr.org:8080/essential_viewer URL is not working.
From the screenshot, it looks like the Essential Widgets have not been installed correctly. Is this a screenshot of Protege running on your server or on a remote client workstation? If it is the workstation, you must also run the installer on each client workstation. However, you can choose just to install the Essential Widgets component (you don't need to install Essential Viewer and the sample repository on each workstation).
Again, the installer looks for your Protege installation and will not let you proceed to the install until it has found a valid Protege installation. You can check whether the installation of the Essential Widgets completed successfully by going to your Protege installation (on each machine that you need to view and update the repository on, i.e. both server and client workstations) and navigating to:
<Protege Install>\plugins and look for a folder called:
.com.enterprise_architecture.essential.widgets
If that folder is not there, then the widgets have not been installed correctly.
From the screenshot, it looks like you've got the server setup correctly and serving the Essential Repository. Just looks like the widgets (which will give you the Essential Architecture Reporting Tab and some other helper widgets) and Essential Viewer have not gone in as expected.
Let me know about where the essential_viewer.war and Essential Widgets ended up!
Thanks
Jonathan
Essential Project Team
I had to type in my Tomcat location. There is no essential viewer folder in there. I have to look for it but thought I'd fix Widgets first.
I had Protege version 3.4.3 and 3.4.4 on my client workstation. When I tried to uninstall version 3.4.3, it would not uninstall the plugins, so I manually deleted them. Same thing happened when I tried to uninstall 3.4.4 (via it's own uninstall program). I tried re-installing and it hangs at step 10 of 11 during widgets. Uninstalled again, re-installed protege and now Essential Manager is hanging at step 7 of 11 for the past 15 minutes.
I sent a screen shot of my remote workstation accessing a project on the server.
I had Protege version 3.4.3 and 3.4.4 on my client workstation. When I tried to uninstall version 3.4.3, it would not uninstall the plugins, so I manually deleted them. Same thing happened when I tried to uninstall 3.4.4 (via it's own uninstall program). I tried re-installing and it hangs at step 10 of 11 during widgets. Uninstalled again, re-installed protege and now Essential Manager is hanging at step 7 of 11 for the past 15 minutes.
I sent a screen shot of my remote workstation accessing a project on the server.
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jonathan.carter
- Posts: 1087
- Joined: 04 Feb 2009, 15:44
Normally, it's best to browse to the Tomcat root folder to make sure it finds everything OK.
So that path should read something like:
On the widgets side, I've just tried running the installer and after it asked me for a confirmation at Step 6, it went to Step 8 (!) [we're using a 3rd party install builder toolkit, so not sure what's going on there]. So, where it's hanging, that's where it's asking you for where to install the server configuration files, right? If you've already pointed the installer at the correct Protege install directory, it's easiest to just accept the default for this step. Next, it should confirm what it is about to do, then it will install everything.
By the way, it's perfectly fine to have multiple versions of Protege on your machine. I've got 3.4.1 and 3.4.4 at the moment (and have had lots of others!) They won't interfere with each other BUT you have to install the Essential Widgets into each Protege installation. You could try the Essential un-installer that is installed along side the sample repository to remove the plugins that Protege did not remove with its un-install.
Finally, you will have to install the widgets on both your server and the client workstations (as I've mentioned before) - so if you have missed that step, that could be why the Architecture Reporting tab was missing in your screenshot. From what you've described it sounds like the widgets are not getting installed anyway. The installer does check to make as sure as it can that where you've pointed it at is a valid installation location for Tomcat and for Protege. In fact, you may have noticed that it won't let you continue past step 5 or 6 of the install until you do point it at valid-looking locations. However, it does not rely on anything that it has not checked for and will continue installing as directed. The only other thing that I can think of is whether the installer has permission to write to the required folders as these are typically in the Program Files folder. I know this will sound like a typical Windows support call but have you tried re-starting the machines since you re-installed Protege. It really sounds like the machine has got a bit mixed up. Feel free to post further screen shots for steps 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 of the installer as this may give me some more clues as to what is going on.
If you get totally stuck with the installer, you can manually copy the 'essential_viewer.war' to the Tomcat/webapps folder on your server. If you can use something like RAR or WinZip to peruse the essentialinstall.jar, there's a good chance you can pull the 'essential-widgets-2.4.zip' out of the archive and then unpack this directly into <Protege Install>\plugins.
Hope this gets things moving forwards
Jonathan
So that path should read something like:
Sounds like the installer might not have found the webapps folder to drop 'essential_viewer.war' into.c:\Apache Software Foundation\tomcat 5.5
On the widgets side, I've just tried running the installer and after it asked me for a confirmation at Step 6, it went to Step 8 (!) [we're using a 3rd party install builder toolkit, so not sure what's going on there]. So, where it's hanging, that's where it's asking you for where to install the server configuration files, right? If you've already pointed the installer at the correct Protege install directory, it's easiest to just accept the default for this step. Next, it should confirm what it is about to do, then it will install everything.
By the way, it's perfectly fine to have multiple versions of Protege on your machine. I've got 3.4.1 and 3.4.4 at the moment (and have had lots of others!) They won't interfere with each other BUT you have to install the Essential Widgets into each Protege installation. You could try the Essential un-installer that is installed along side the sample repository to remove the plugins that Protege did not remove with its un-install.
Finally, you will have to install the widgets on both your server and the client workstations (as I've mentioned before) - so if you have missed that step, that could be why the Architecture Reporting tab was missing in your screenshot. From what you've described it sounds like the widgets are not getting installed anyway. The installer does check to make as sure as it can that where you've pointed it at is a valid installation location for Tomcat and for Protege. In fact, you may have noticed that it won't let you continue past step 5 or 6 of the install until you do point it at valid-looking locations. However, it does not rely on anything that it has not checked for and will continue installing as directed. The only other thing that I can think of is whether the installer has permission to write to the required folders as these are typically in the Program Files folder. I know this will sound like a typical Windows support call but have you tried re-starting the machines since you re-installed Protege. It really sounds like the machine has got a bit mixed up. Feel free to post further screen shots for steps 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 of the installer as this may give me some more clues as to what is going on.
If you get totally stuck with the installer, you can manually copy the 'essential_viewer.war' to the Tomcat/webapps folder on your server. If you can use something like RAR or WinZip to peruse the essentialinstall.jar, there's a good chance you can pull the 'essential-widgets-2.4.zip' out of the archive and then unpack this directly into <Protege Install>\plugins.
Hope this gets things moving forwards
Jonathan
Essential Project Team
Hi Jonathan,
I did mention the .war file was in the Tomcat Webapps folder and that I thought it should be imploded. I wound up re-starting the Tomcat server and it deployed the war file.
Re: The client widget installation, I re-started my PC, clicked next at step 10 of 11; this time it did hang at step 7 so something was not right as you suspected. Due to the fact I thought widgets were not installed correctly, I was waiting for step 11 to finish during the re-install. I clicked next and got the sucess message.
This is how my client connection to the server looks now. Looks great? Please let me know if anything is amiss. Thank you so much for your help.
I did mention the .war file was in the Tomcat Webapps folder and that I thought it should be imploded. I wound up re-starting the Tomcat server and it deployed the war file.
Re: The client widget installation, I re-started my PC, clicked next at step 10 of 11; this time it did hang at step 7 so something was not right as you suspected. Due to the fact I thought widgets were not installed correctly, I was waiting for step 11 to finish during the re-install. I clicked next and got the sucess message.
This is how my client connection to the server looks now. Looks great? Please let me know if anything is amiss. Thank you so much for your help.
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jonathan.carter
- Posts: 1087
- Joined: 04 Feb 2009, 15:44
That screenshot looks correct now - with the Essential Architecture Reporting tab showing, the widgets must have installed correctly.
Glad you have got the Essential Viewer deployed into Tomcat. I should have mentioned that occasionally Tomcat doesn't seem to recognise a newly deployed WAR file and needs a restart.
If you go to the Essential Architecture Reporting tab, update the Reporting Service URL to point to your server and push the Publish button a snapshot of your repository will be sent to Essential Viewer for analysis and reporting.
Glad that everything sounds like it is working correctly now. Don't hesitate to post back if you have any further queries
Jonathan
Glad you have got the Essential Viewer deployed into Tomcat. I should have mentioned that occasionally Tomcat doesn't seem to recognise a newly deployed WAR file and needs a restart.
If you go to the Essential Architecture Reporting tab, update the Reporting Service URL to point to your server and push the Publish button a snapshot of your repository will be sent to Essential Viewer for analysis and reporting.
Glad that everything sounds like it is working correctly now. Don't hesitate to post back if you have any further queries
Jonathan
Essential Project Team
