The IntelliPortal server is designed to provide configurable, targeted content to customers through channels to which they subscribe. It is designed to integrate into existing environments, providing common interface hookpoints that easily let you present existing data and functionality to your customers. While the server remains running, and without interruption or any delay in responding to client requests, IntelliPortal lets you
It is designed to run 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The IntelliPortal server is used to start/stop/manage transmitters, add/delete/modify content, and perform other administrative tasks. The transmitter portion of the server is contacted by the IntelliPortal client application for subscribing/unsubscribing, receiving generic channel data, as well as for user-specific information. The transmitter can be set to run in SSL or non-SSL mode. SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a leading security protocol on the Internet that lets the browser and server exchange data via secret key encryption.
IntelliPortal systems administrators use the Server Administrator tool to contact and manage IntelliPortal servers. The Server Administrator is itself a client/server application and the client application can run on machines other than the host where IntelliPortal is installed. The Server Administrator client can run locally or remotely on Solaris or Windows 95/NT machines. One Server Administrator client is needed for each IntelliPortal server application and it cannot operate from behind a firewall. Other features include:
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The IntelliPortal server software is written in pure Java with no native components. It is designed and implemented to build and run with standard JDK packages. Except for the JAR files supplied by MECA and certain embedded components from Oracle and Marimba, no other third-party components are required.
The server consists of a background Java process which is used to manage both data and other background processes (transmitters). The server is managed by a Server Administrator client. The Server Administrator client is also pure Java and communicates with a running server via Remote Method Invocation (RMI). There is authentication for different levels of administrator permissions, and any command is authenticated by the server before execution.
Current implementations of Java do not provide SSL for RMI. For this reason, all startup and runtime properties reside in property files located in an etc directory. All data storage is done through JDBC; this lets you control security, backup, and redundancy.
The IntelliPortal v1.1 server has been tested with Oracle7 and Oracle8. There may be conflicts if you install IntelliPortal on a server where a different version of Oracle is installed. |
IntelliPortal v1.1 has been tested with the following environment. See the appropriate readme files for vendor updates. |
set rlim_fd_cur = 1024 set rlim_fd_max = 1024
Before you install IntelliPortal, there are several tasks you may need to perform.
You must get a transmitter license from MECA for each IntelliPortal transmitter. Contact your account representative at MECA, before server installation, and you will be e-mailed a license file within 48 hours.
A digital certificate provides encrypted security for communication between client and server. When a transmitter is running in SSL mode, all channels and all background communication between client and server are secured via the SSL protocol. SSL can adversely affect performance so you should plan in advance for channels that will be published with SSL.
Currently, VeriSign, Inc. is the only certificate authority used by Castanet products. A digital certificate remains valid for a limited time and takes 3-5 days to obtain. As a convenience, Marimba and VeriSign have created a test certificate. The test certificate is free and expires two weeks after issue. See the FAQs in this document and contact VeriSign for more information.
In IntelliPortal, each authentication server communicates with one transmitter and you can have multiple authentication server/transmitter pairs on a host machine. SSL is enabled on a per transmitter basis but you only need one digital certificate per host. You do not need a separate digital certificate for each secure transmitter.
When installing a transmitter, you are prompted to enable the transmitter for SSL. If you choose to enable SSL, you must run the Marimba utility that lets you to manage the certificate. If you configure for SSL, you can't start the transmitter without a digital certificate. Note that the Marimba utility and the IntelliPortal Server Administrator are GUI applications that require an X terminal.
Before you can install IntelliPortal, you need to create a separate operating system user account on the server for each transmitter that you install. When creating this account, use the Korn shell or the Bourne shell. This user is called the transmitter user and is referred to in code as <os_user_name>.
On Solaris servers, the server and transmitters will run as a user. When the installation script runs, it asks this user's name and sets the server to run as that user. This user must exist and have access to the database of choice. The server picks up the environment from that user and uses this environment.
The Unix user must have JAVA_HOME set and must know about the database environment (except for IntelliPortal QuickStart). The user must have access to the database and must have access through JDBC. The environment variables (shown in bold below) are usually defined in the user's $HOME/.profile file. Note that the following code is an example for an Oracle database. The values you actually use must be appropriate for your own site.
$HOME/.profile ORACLE_BASE=/opt/u01/app/oracle ORACLE_HOME=$ORACLE_BASE/product/7.3.3 ORACLE_SID=MECA export ORACLE_BASE ORACLE_HOME ORACLE_SID JAVA_HOME=/usr/java CLASSPATH="$CLASSPATH:.:$HOME/lib/classes111.zip LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$HOME/lib" PATH=.:/usr/java/bin:/opt/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:$ORACLE_HOME/bin:/usr/ccs/bin:/usr/ ucb export JAVA_HOME PATH CLASSPATH LD_LIBRARY_PATH
The following settings are optional and may improve performance. These are usually entered in the /etc/rc2.d/S69inet startup script. They are not required and you may choose not to implement them based on other system requirements.
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To tune Solaris for optimum performance |
ndd -set /dev/tcp tcp_rexmit_interval_min 1500 ndd -set /dev/tcp tcp_close_wait_interval 60000 ndd -set /dev/tcp tcp_slow_start_inital 2 ndd -set /dev/tcp tcp_conn_req_max_q 1024