Separation of Scope and Portability

The settings.xml file holds environmental information (server addresses, passwords, system properties, repository settings, etc.) for your Aspire installation.

What goes in the Settings File vs the Application XML configuration file?

Appropriate for the settings.xml Configuration File:

• Server names
• Port addresses
• User names & passwords
• App Bundle properties
• Applications to launch on startup

Appropriate for the application.xml Configuration File:

• Component configuration
• Pipeline configuration
• All document processing functionality

Many components in the system configuration file require server names, user names, etc. as configuration elements. To make your system configuration file portable over multiple installations, these configuration elements should be specified as properties in the settings.xml file.

Settings File Location

On startup, the Aspire application will automatically attempt to load the settings from the following locations:

• The file whose name is given in the ASPIRE_SETTINGS_PROPERTY ("com.searchtechnologies.aspire.settings"). This can be set supplying the parameter -Dcom.searchtechnologies.aspire.settings=filename on the JVM command line.
• The /config/settings.hostname.xml under the Aspire Home directory, set via the ASPIRE_HOME_PROPERTY ("com.searchtechnologies.aspire.home"). This can be set supplying the parameter -Dcom.searchtechnologies.aspire.home=directory on the JVM command line.
• The /config/settings.xml under the Aspire Home directory.

Structure of settings.xml

The settings.xml file contains sections for automatically starting system configuration files, setting Aspire system properties, and setting Apache Felix system properties. The overall structure is as follows:

<settings>
  <!-- Specify system properties which are available to all Aspire system configuration files -->
  <properties>
    <property name="solrServer">http://localhost:8080</property>
    <property name="autoStart">false</property>
    .
    .
    .
  </properties>
 <!--Entitlements -->
 <entitlementsServer online="true">https://entitlements.searchtechnologies.com</entitlementsServer>

  <!-- Specify properties for the OSGI Configuration Administration server. These are specific
       properties required by individual components within Apache Felix. Many of these properties
       may be better configured in the "felix.properties" file -->
  <configAdmin>
    <properties pid="org.apache.felix.webconsole.internal.servlet.OsgiManager">
      <property name="username">admin</property>
      <property name="password">admin1</property>
      <property name="manager.root">/osgi</property>
    </properties>
  </configAdmin>

  <!-- Specify applications to automatically install on startup, and provide the system
       configuration file for each one -->
  <autoStart>
  <!-- Workflow manager is required for 2.0 UI -->
   <application config="com.searchtechnologies.aspire:app-workflow-manager" id="1">
     <properties>
       <property name="templateFile">${appbundle.home}/data/templates.xml</property>
       <property name="libraryPath">${aspire.config.dir}/workflow-libraries</property>
       <property name="planFile"/>
       <property name="disableInternalTemplates">false</property>
       <property name="allowCustomRule">true</property>
       <property name="debug">false</property>
     </properties>
   </application>
  </autoStart>


  <!-- Repositories specify where components can be found or downloaded -->
  <repositories>
    <repository type="distribution">
      <directory>bundles/aspire</directory>
    </repository>

    <repository type="maven">
      <defaultVersion>3.0</defaultVersion>
      <updatePolicy>always</updatePolicy>
      <remoteRepositories>
        <remoteRepository>
          <id>stPublic</id>
          <url>https://repository.searchtechnologies.com/artifactory/public/</url>
          <user>YOUR-REGISTERED-USERNAME</user>
          <password>YOUR-REGISTERED-PASSWORD</password>
        </remoteRepository>
      </remoteRepositories>
    </repository>

  </repositories>
 <configAdministration>
   <zookeeper libraryFolder="config/workflow-libraries" root="/aspire">
     <clientPort>1112</clientPort>
     <dataDir>config</dataDir>
     <maxConnections>60</maxConnections>
     <tickTime>2000</tickTime>
   </zookeeper>
 </configAdministration>
 <authentication>
   <type>none</type> 
 </authentication>
 <ldapConfig>
   <config>
     <server>ldap://localhost:389</server>
     <authentication>simple</authentication>
     <searchBase>dc=localhost, dc=com</searchBase>
     <group>OU=Users,OU=Group</group>
   </config>
 </ldapConfig>
 
</settings>

Auto Start Section

The <autoStart> section will automatically load applications when Aspire is initialized. It contains a simple list of application files to load, for example:

  <autoStart>
    <application config="config/application-common.xml"/>
    <application config="config/application-arc.xml"/>
    <application config="config/application-companydb.xml"/>
    <application config="config/application-rss-feeds.xml"/>
    <application config="config/application-single-pages.xml"/>
    <application config="com.searchtechnologies.appbundles:cs-rdbms-connector:1.0-SNAPSHOT">
      <properties>
        <property name="rdbmsHasDefaults">false</property>
        <property name="debug">true</property>
      </properties>
    </application>
    <!-- Workflow manager is required for 3.0 UI -->
     <application config="com.searchtechnologies.aspire:app-workflow-manager" id="1">
       <properties>
         <property name="templateFile">${appbundle.home}/data/templates.xml</property>
         <property name="libraryPath">${aspire.config.dir}/workflow-libraries</property>
         <property name="planFile"/>
         <property name="disableInternalTemplates">false</property>
         <property name="allowCustomRule">true</property>
         <property name="debug">false</property>
       </properties>
     </application>
  </autoStart>

Applications are loaded in the order specified. However, since Aspire has component-dependency checking built-in, the order of load is usually not that important.

Both Application XML Files and App Bundles

The <application> tag can launch an application either from an application XML file or an App Bundle.

• For application XML files: The @config attribute should hold the file name of the Application XML file to load.

• For App Bundles: The @config attribute should hold the Maven coordinates of the App Bundle to start.

Rename Auto-Started Applications

In general, the name of the application will be taken as the "default name" as specified at the top of the application.xml file. See Configuration File Basics for more information.

However, you can specify other names for the configuration file using the @name attribute, as shown below:

   <application name="RDBConnector2" config="com.searchtechnologies.appbundles:cs-rdbms-connector:2.0>
     <properties>
       <property name="rdbmsHasDefaults">false</property>
       <property name="debug">true</property>
     </properties>
   </application>

This lets you install the same App Bundle multiple times, but with different top-level names.

Application Properties

Finally, as shown above, applications can have a nested <properties> tag which holds properties that are defined just for that application. These properties can then be used with the ${propName} substitution pattern within the application.xml file.

Repositories Section

The <repositories> tag identifies where to find component code to load into Aspire. There are two types of repositories: Distribution and Maven.

Distribution Repository

The Distribution Repository will load the component Jar files in a directory within your Aspire distribution, typically the "bundles/aspire" directory.

It is configured as follows:

 <repository type="distribution">
    <directory>bundles/aspire</directory>
 </repository>

The <directory> tag identifies the directory where the bundles can be located.

On startup, Aspire will scan through the entire directory looking for bundles to load. If at any time you add new bundles (or update bundles) in this directory, then click on "Check for Updates" on the Aspire application home page. This will cause Aspire to re-scan the directory so that the new files are available.

Maven Repository

The Maven Repository loads the component Jar files directly from Maven. The Maven Repository allows Aspire to share the same Jars as Eclipse and the Maven command-line program. Therefore, any newly 'install'ed or 'deploy'ed Jar file artifacts will be automatically available to Aspire.

It is configured as follows:

   <repository type="maven">
     <localRepository>~search/.m2/repository</localRepository>
     <defaultVersion>3.0</defaultVersion>
     <updatePolicy>always</updatePolicy>
     <offline>false</offline>
     <remoteRepositories>
       <remoteRepository>
         <id>stPublic</id>
         <url>https://repository.searchtechnologies.com/artifactory/public/</url>
         <user>YOUR-REGISTERED-USERNAME</user>
         <password>YOUR-REGISTERED-PASSWORD</password>
       </remoteRepository>
     </remoteRepositories>
   </repository>

The Maven Repository uses the standard APIs for accessing artifacts from Maven repositories (the same as used by the Maven program itself). It will download artifacts as necessary from any of the the remote repositories specified and store them in the local repository. It will then load the bundle Jar files directly from the local repository into Aspire.

The following options are available for the maven repository:

Use Specific Versions of Bundle

If required, you can force the Maven repository to give you a specific version of a bundle if you don't specify it in the factoryName in application.xml files or in the config attribute in the autoStart section of the settings file.

Normally in Aspire, if references to Maven artifacts to not give the version, then the defaultVersion (see above) is used. However, you may add a bundleVersions section to the settings file to give more precise control over the versions of bundles loaded. The parameters are shown below:

Example:

The following snippet will load all requested bundles at version 1.0, except the three specified, which will be loaded at the requested version

  <repository type="maven">
   <defaultVersion>1.0</defaultVersion>
   <bundleVersions>
     <bundle artifactId="aspire-tools" version="1.1"/>
     <bundle groupId="com.myCustomer" artifactId="myCustomerArtifact" version="0.1-SNAPSHOT"/>
     <bundle groupId="com.searchtechnologies" artifactId="aspire-business-rules" version="2.0"/>
   </bundleVersions>
   <remoteRepository>
     <id>stPublic</id>
     <url>https://repository.searchtechnologies.com/artifactory/public/</url>
     <user>YOUR-REGISTERED-USERNAME</user>
     <password>YOUR-REGISTERED-PASSWORD</password>
   </remoteRepository>
 <repository>

Proxy Settings

You can configure Maven remote repositories to use a HTTP proxy for outgoing communications. This is useful when your Aspire server has restricted access to the Internet, and you want to be able to fetch bundles as normal from the configured repository. To do this add a <proxy> section to your remote repository and set the following properties:

Example:

     <remoteRepository>
          <id>stPublic</id>
          <url>{{RepositoryUrl}}</url>
          <user>YOUR-REGISTERED-USERNAME</user>
          <password>YOUR-REGISTERED-PASSWORD</password>
          <proxy>
              <host>127.0.0.1</host>
              <port>8888</port>
              <user>PROXY-USER</user>
              <password>PROXY-PASSWORD</password>
          </proxy>
    </remoteRepository>

Default

If no <repositories> tag is specified, a single "distribution" repository with "bundles/aspire" as the directory will be automatically specified.

Properties

Properties are specified as name/value pairs. For example:

   <properties>
    <property name="solrServer">http://localhost:8080</property>
    <property name="autoStart">false</property>
    <property name="crawlDataBase">data/crawler</property>
    <property name="ccdBase">data</property>
  </properties>

Once specified in the settings.xml file, these properties become available for use in Application XML files. Careful use of such properties will make your system configuration files portable to multiple Aspire installations without modification.

For example, you might use "http://localhost:8080" as your SOLR server on your personal laptop, but then use "http://customer.searchtechnologies.com:8983" for the production site. Using a property will allow the exact same system configuration file to be tested on one machine and then installed on another machine without modification.

Use Properties & Environment variables in Application XML Files

Properties declared in the settings.xml file can be used in application XML files with the ${propertyName} syntax. As an example:

<component name="feed2Solr" subType="default" factoryName="aspire-post-xml">
  <postXsl>config/aspire2solr.xsl</solrXsl>
  <postUrl>${solrServer}/solr/update</postUrl>
</component>

In the above example, the "solrServer" property was defined in the settings.xml file and then referenced with ${solrServer} in the application XML file.

This property value substitution occurs automatically on the component configurations by the Component Manager. It does not require any further intervention or programming on the part of any individual component.

The ${XXX} syntax can also be used for substitution of environment variables and Java system properties (i.e., those defined on the command line with -Dxxx=yyy). Substitution prefers properties defined in the settings.xml file. If the property is not found in the settings.xml file, the system properties are checked and if still not found, the system environment is checked. Also, in these versions, properties may be defined from other properties:

<property name="baseDir">/home/user/aspire</property>
<property name="configDir">${baseDir}/cfg</property> 

Note: Property references for properties that are not in the settings.xml file will be left as-is. This allows for other configurations that use the same syntax (specifically, the Groovy Scripting component) to continue to operate properly.

XML Property Expansion

You can also use properties to add entire XML structures to a component configuration. To achieve this, define a property containing XML in a <![CDATA[..]]> section. Then, when expanding this property, you prefix the property name with xml: and the contents of the property will be interpreted as XML and added to the structure.

For example:

<settings>
  <properties>
    <property name="expanders"><![CDATA[<expanders><expander>${prop1}</expander><expander>two</expander></expanders>]]></property>
    <property name="prop1">Lincoln</property>
    <property name="testProp">testVal</property>
    <property name="testDoc"><![CDATA[<doc><title/></doc>]]></property>
    <property name="testDoc1"><![CDATA[<doc1><title1/></doc1>]]></property>
  </properties>
</settings>

and

 <config>
  ${xml:expanders}
  XXX
  ${xml:testDoc}
  <expanders2>${xml:expanders}</expanders2>
  <expanders_text>${expanders}</expanders_text>
  <test>${testProp}</test>
  ${xml:testDoc1}
  YYY
</config>

expands to

 <config>XXX<expanders2>
    <expanders>
      <expander>Lincoln</expander>
      <expander>two</expander>
    </expanders>
  </expanders2>
  <expanders_text><expanders><expander>Lincoln</expander><expander>two</expander></expanders></expanders_text>
  <test>testVal</test>YYY<expanders>
    <expander>Lincoln</expander>
    <expander>two</expander>
  </expanders>
  <doc>
    <title/>
  </doc>
  <doc1>
    <title1/>
  </doc1>
</config>

Property Escaping (for Groovy Scripts)

If you need to insert a property into a Groovy script, assigning it to a String that contains the \ character (such as ${aspire.home} would), will cause Groovy to raise an error as it sees invalid escaped characters. To avoid this, you can prefix the property name with escape: and any \ characters in the contents of the property will be replaced with \\.

For example:

<settings>
 <properties>
   <property name="file">c:\top-directory\directory\file.html</property>
 </properties>
</settings>

and

<config>
 <file>${file}</file>
 <escapefile>${escape:file}</escapefile>
 <fileattr attr="${file}">somevalue</fileattr>
 <escapefileattr escapeattr="${escape:file}">somevalue</escapefileattr>
 <cdata>
   <![CDATA[
      def a = "${file}";
   ]]>
 </cdata>
 <escapecdata>
   <![CDATA[
      def a = "${escape:file}";
   ]]>
 </escapecdata>
</config>

expands to

<config>
 <file>c:\top-directory\directory\file.html</file>
 <escapefile>c:\\top-directory\\directory\\file.html</escapefile>
 <fileattr attr="c:\top-directory\directory\file.html">somevalue</fileattr>
 <escapefileattr escapeattr="c:\\top-directory\\directory\\file.html">somevalue</escapefileattr>
 <cdata>
   <![CDATA[
     def a = "c:\top-directory\directory\file.html";                <<<< THIS LINE WOULD ERROR IN A GROOVY SCRIPT
   ]]>
 </cdata>
 <escapecdata>
   <![CDATA[
     def a = "c:\\top-directory\\directory\\file.html";
   ]]>
 </escapecdata>
</config>

Properties for Applications

You can specify properties that apply to a specific application (rather than the properties above which apply to all components).

<autoStart>
  <application config="config/system.xml">
    <properties>
      <property name="debug">true</property>
      <property name="managerExternalRDB">false</property>
      <property name="managerRDB">CSRDB</property>
    </properties>
  </application>
  <application config="com.searchtechnologies.appbundles:cs-manager:3.0">
    <properties>
      <property name="debug">true</property>
      <property name="managerExternalRDB">false</property>
      <property name="managerRDB">CSRDB</property>
      <property name="managerExternalJDBCUrl"></property>
      <property name="managerExternalJDBCDriverJar"></property>
      <property name="managerExternalJDBCUser"></property>
      <property name="managerExternalJDBCPassword"></property>
    </properties>
  </application>
</autoStart>

These properties are passed to all components (and only those components) that exist "under" the component manager. If the same property names are used both at the global level and the component manager level, the component manager definition will be used for components "under" that manager, whilst the global value would be used for other components.

Apache Felix Configuration

Some Apache Felix configuration parameters can also be placed in the settings.xml file, as follows:

<configAdmin>
   <properties pid="org.apache.felix.webconsole.internal.servlet.OsgiManager">
     <property name="username">admin</property>
     <property name="password">admin1</property>
     <property name="manager.root">/osgi</property>
   </properties>
</configAdmin>

Although, before using this approach, check to see if these parameters can be stored in the Apache Felix system properties file (called "felix.properties" for most Aspire installations). That may be the better location for these properties.

Inside <configAdmin>, each <property> tag contains a "pid" attribute which is the "persistent ID" of the configuration element. The nested properties are the OSGi Configuration properties

See the following for more information about OSGi and Apache Felix configuration properties:

• Apache Felix Framework Usage
• OSGi specifications download page - Go here and download the "Compendium Specification" to get more details on the OSGi configuration server and how it's used.
• Apache Felix Web Console Properties
• Apache Felix HTTP Service Properties

Distributed Processing

If you are operating in a high-volume environment, you can set up Aspire so that document jobs are automatically and efficiently routed to various machines. There is an automated Discovery Manager which detects servers that are brought online and offline, re-routing jobs as needed between machines.

Distributed processing allows for jobs to be sent to remote Aspire Distributions (called remote nodes). This increases performance when there are high resource consuming pipelines by load balancing the work across all available remote nodes.

Communications between remote nodes must be tightly coupled, meaning that they must be on the same intranet, geographically in the same place and (recommended) with no firewalls or other security mechanisms between nodes on the cluster.

See below for information on setting up distributed communications between nodes. Refer to [Branch handler] for information on sending jobs to remote nodes.

Distributed Communications

Enabling distributed communication allows Aspire to communicate with other Aspire nodes (such as node discovery, fetching configurations, receiving jobs from other nodes, using Admin UI, etc).

The following options are available:

Discovery Managers

Default Discovery Manager

This Discovery Manager has the basic functionality for remote nodes and resource discovery.

Example configuration:

<discoveryManager type="default">
</discoveryManager>

Discovery Methods

One of the following discovery methods must be configured inside the <discoveryManager type="default"> tag.

Static Discovery

Useful for debugging or in well known cluster setups (with static IP addresses configurations). Reads a list of remote nodes and registers them for remote branching.

Each node is identified by its IP Address and its distributed communications port.

Available options are:

Example configuration:

 <discoveryManager type="default">
	<discovery type="static">
		<checkTimeout>45000</checkTimeout>
		<remoteNodes>
			<remoteNode portNumber="51510">10.10.30.122</remoteNode>
			<remoteNode portNumber="51515">10.10.20.139</remoteNode>
		</remoteNodes>
	</discovery>
</discoveryManager>

You must specify each remote node IP Address and port as shown above. Notice that the port number corresponds to the distributed communications port, not the Aspire ordinary HTTP port.

Broadcast Discovery

Intercepts discovery messages sent by other nodes. If the incoming message is from a new node, it is registered. Otherwise, that node information is updated.

You must enable this discovery method if you want a node to broadcast information about itself.

Available options are:

Example configuration:

 <discoveryManager type="default">
	<discovery type="broadcast">
		<broadcastPort>10324</broadcastPort>
		<multicastAddressGroup>230.0.0.1</multicastAddressGroup>
	</discovery>
</discoveryManager>

 Complete example

 <distributedCommunications enabled="true">
	<checkpointJobRequests>true</checkpointJobRequests>
	<connectionIdleTimeout>120000</connectionIdleTimeout>
	<port>51510</port>
	<pollTimeout>100</pollTimeout>
	<tcp>
		<keepAlive>false</keepAlive>
		<trafficClass>2</trafficClass>
		<reuseAddress>false</reuseAddress>
		<readTimeout>10000</readTimeout>
		<tcpNoDelay>false</tcpNoDelay>
	</tcp>
	<discoveryManager type="default">
		<discovery type="static">
			<checkTimeout>45000</checkTimeout>
			<remoteNodes>
				<remoteNode portNumber="51515">192.168.0.122</remoteNode>
				<remoteNode portNumber="51515">10.10.20.139</remoteNode>
			</remoteNodes>
		</discovery>
	
		<discovery type="broadcast">
			<broadcastPort>10324</broadcastPort>
			<multicastAddressGroup>230.0.0.1</multicastAddressGroup>
		</discovery>
	</discoveryManager>
</distributedCommunications>

Amazon EC2 Discovery Manager

Since you cannot use the broadcast discovery method at Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud because of network restrictions, you can use the Amazon EC2 Discovery Manager for dynamic discovering of remote nodes.

Example configuration:

 <discoveryManager type="amazonec2">
      <implementation>com.searchtechnologies.aspire:aspire-amazonec2-dm</implementation>

</discoveryManager>

Amazon EC2 Discovery Method

Example configuration:

 <discoveryManager type="amazonec2">
	<implementation>com.searchtechnologies.aspire:aspire-amazonec2-dm</implementation>

	<discovery type="amazonec2">
		<accessKey>encrypted:ENCRYPTED_ACCESS_KEY</accessKey>
		<secretKey>encrypted:ENCRYPTED_SECRET_KEY</secretKey>
	</discovery>

</discoveryManager>

Advanced configuration:

 <discoveryManager type="amazonec2">
	<implementation>com.searchtechnologies.aspire:aspire-amazonec2-dm</implementation>

	<discovery type="amazonec2">
		<accessKey>encrypted:ENCRYPTED_ACCESS_KEY</accessKey>
		<secretKey>encrypted:ENCRYPTED_SECRET_KEY</secretKey>
		<usePublicIP>false</usePublicIP>
		<securityGroup>MySecurityGroup</securityGroup>
		<pollFrequency>1000</pollFrequency>
	</discovery>

</discoveryManager>

Zookeeper Discovery Manager

This discovery manager uses zookeeper as a centralized site for discovering remote nodes and their resources as well. Click here for details about Zookeeper installation and configuration.

Example configuration:

 <discoveryManager type="zookeeper">
	<implementation>com.searchtechnologies.aspire:aspire-zk-dm</implementation>
	<zookeeperConnection>127.0.0.1:2182,127.0.0.1:2183,127.0.0.1:2181</zookeeperConnection>
</discoveryManager>

Advanced configuration:

<discoveryManager type="zookeeper">
	<implementation>com.searchtechnologies.aspire:aspire-zk-dm</implementation>
	<zookeeperConnection>127.0.0.1:2182,127.0.0.1:2183,127.0.0.1:2181</zookeeperConnection>
	<zookeeperPath>/aspire/nodes</zookeeperPath>
	<zookeeperTimeout>3000</zookeeperTimeout>
	<resourceUpdateTime>2000</resourceUpdateTime>
</discoveryManager>

Security Configuration

This is the configuration to use the Login page. The type options are (ConfigFile or Ldap). For more details see Security Page.

Options for authentication are 'None' (default), 'ConfigFile', 'Ldap'

<authentication>
   <type>none</type> 
</authentication>

LDAP authentication options are 'none', 'simple'(default), 'DIGEST-MD5'. If none was selected, anonymous access will be attempted

 <ldapConfig>
   <config>
     <server>ldap://localhost:389</server>
     <authentication>simple</authentication>
     <searchBase>dc=localhost, dc=com</searchBase>
     <group>OU=Users,OU=Group</group>
   </config>
 </ldapConfig>

Zookeeper Configuration

For keeping the stability and configuration consistent over multiple Aspire servers for content source crawls. For this, Aspire uses Apache ZooKeeper to synchronize configurations (content sources and workflow applications) and coordinate and resume failed crawls, among several Aspire servers. For more details see Failover for Aspire using Zookeeper .

  <configAdministration>
   <zookeeper libraryFolder="config/workflow-libraries" root="/aspire">
     <!-- <externalServer>127.0.0.1:2182,127.0.0.1:2183,127.0.0.1:2181</externalServer> -->
     <clientPort>1112</clientPort>
     <dataDir>config</dataDir>
     <maxConnections>60</maxConnections>
     <tickTime>2000</tickTime>
   </zookeeper>
 </configAdministration>

Using external ZooKeeper servers is an Aspire Enterprise feature.

Entitlements

This is the server site where entitlements will be located. This is used to populate the config/entitlements.xml file used to fill the Home Page connector list and the Workflow section publisher and application lists.

  <entitlementsServer online="true">https://entitlements.searchtechnologies.com</entitlementsServer>

The online attribute can be set to false if you have no internet access from the Aspire Server. In this case if you want to populate the connector list of the Home Page, and the publishers and applications list of the Workflow Section you will have to edit the entitlements.xml file (also in the config directory) by yourself. You can generate the file contents for your user by visiting Entitlements and following the instructions.