Having successfully acquired the software, it's time to try it out.
The directory test
under the main distribution directory contains
a small sample database of GILS records.
NOTE: The records included in the distribution are part of a sample set provided by the US Geological Survey, as a service to GILS implementors. They are included for testing and demonstrating the software, and neither the USGS or Index Data nor anyone else should be held responsible for their contents.
If you cd
to the test
directory, the first thing to notice
is the file zebra.cfg
. There has to be a file like this present
whenever you run Zebra - it establishes various settings and defaults,
and we'll return to its contents below (a detailed
description is found in the general Zebra documentation file).
The subdirectory records
contains the sample records. We'll get
back to them, too.
The first order of business is to index the sample records, and create
the access files required by the Z39.50 server. To do this, position
yourself in the test
directory, and type the command
$ ../index/zebraidx update records
The indexing program will respond with a stream of control
information, and when it completes, the database is ready. To start
the Z39.50 server, type the command ../index/zebrasrv
.
Assuming that nothing unfortunate happened, you are now running a
GILS-compliant Z39.50 server on the port 9999 on your local machine
(to learn how to run the server at a different port, and redirect the
diagnostic output to a file, consult the section on Running
zebrasrv in the general documentation).
The database containing the sample records is named Default
.
To test the server, you can use any compatible Z39.50 client. You can
also use the simple demonstration client which is included with Zebra
itself. To do this, start a new session on your machine (or put the
server in the background). Change to the directory yaz/client
under the main Zebra distribution directory. Now execute the command
$ ./client tcp:localhost:9999
If all went well, the client will tell you that it has established an association with your test server. To test it, try out these commands:
Z> find surficial
Z> show 1
The default retrieval syntax for the client is USMARC. To try other formats for the same record, try:
Z>format sutrs
Z>show 1
Z>format grs-1
Z>show 1
Z>elements B
Z>show 1
You can learn more about the sample client by reading the README
file in the yaz
directory.